Artist Statement for Looking Deeper: Emerging Concepts

Art driven by ideas and focused on perception.

"Looking Deeper" begins with recognition.

Each work starts from something the viewer already recognizes. Sometimes it is an image from art or popular culture. Sometimes it is a familiar object or form. These starting points are intentional. They give the viewer an immediate way in.

Starting from there, the journey begins and the work emerges.

Each piece develops through a chain of physical stages, which can include pinhole photography, image transfer, color transformation, chance, and reconstruction. Pinhole photography plays a key role in capturing an image, but its place in the chain changes from work to work. Sometimes it is the beginning, sometimes the end, and sometimes a passage in between. When an image is transferred into a new surface, the transfer becomes the printing process itself, and the work exists as a singular object rather than a copy.

Many of the tools used to create the work are self-constructed. Building these systems allows the means of seeing, including decisions about perspective and the visible presence of the film itself, to become part of the artistic process.

Meaning is not imposed at the start. It emerges as the work develops. Tension, imbalance, and unexpected relationships surface, often revealing ideas that were not part of the initial intent.

A familiar image becomes unstable.

A structured composition develops friction.

A controlled system produces unpredictable outcomes.

These transformations are not corrections. They are the work.

The viewer follows a similar path. Recognition comes first, then disruption, then interpretation. What begins as something known becomes something else.

To look deeper is not just to analyze the image, but to witness how meaning forms through reference, process, and change.