My drawing and animated work reflects my ongoing concern with the reciprocity between environment and experience. The sets I construct for my film animations are the environments for the experience of my characters. The development of their experience in turn modifies the set. Often time the physical planes in my work are manifestations of a psychological dynamic.
To define environment I think of physical space and non-physical space. Physical space can be public, private, man made or natural. Spaces throughout the world vary endlessly in the way they look and feel, and their variation prefigures the broad range of human experience. It goes almost without saying that the spaces we live in, whether we choose them or they are forced upon us, impacts on the nature and quality of our lived experiences. Space also impacts us emotionally and psychologically, helps determine our sense of self worth and our social standing. I define these contingent psychological and emotional conditions as non-physical space. These non-physical spaces can be unique to the individual, and defined by personal psychology, or collective, and studied in the form of group dynamics.
What these environments create in us is an experience. They create collective experience as well as individual experience. They allow us to see our selves in a certain way with certain possibilities and limitations as individuals and as groups. We use this understanding to then create, analyze and re-create environments. I am interested in this interplay between these inherently linked factors and the co-dependent personal and cultural developments caused by their relationship.
Much of my work is psychological in nature and told through personal narrative. It is an investigation of relationships. Many of the narratives take place in artificial environments, reflecting my belief that personality is shaped by and also shapes our surroundings. Many times the background imagery is an interpretation of a “non-p
