Becoming Human

As you look at these drawings, I’d like you to ask yourself two questions – quietly, in your own, most intimate mind, consider, “Do I understand what it really is to be fully human? And if not, can I use art to become more human?”

I ask these questions because they are the real content behind each of my drawings. Every drawing you see here is a layer of my shed skin – false and former versions of myself sloughed off in the form of an aesthetic artifact.

They're the crumbling pieces of the prostrated figures in “Saturn Returns,” the fire burning up the kneeling body in “Why Me?” the apple Eve hands to eyeless Adam in “Taste and See.”

And now I ask you another question: What happens when the stonier parts of ourselves crumble, or when the fire consumes us entirely, or when we suffer a fall for having eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge?

In the process of making these drawings, I’ve come to believe that when we crumble or burn or fall we gain a deeper understanding of life and in so doing become more human. That’s all. We don’t die horribly or suffer eternally or transcend ethereally.

We’re just Becoming Human.