The Creative Journey

I started making art as an adolescent, raised in Greenwich Village by an artistic single mother. My early influences were abstract expressionists like Rauschenberg, Motherwell, and Johns. I discovered painting in a small studio on Perry Street while my mother made large plastic light sculptures using an industrial vacuuform machinery that my stepfather helped build.

In my early twenties, I began exploring technology-based mediums, with video and photography becoming my primary art forms. I was drawn to their accessibility and ability to document and record everyday moments. I graduated from the Philadelphia College of Art—now UARTS—in 1975 with a BFA in Film. Choosing to major in film was a career-motivated decision, as commercials were evolving into an art form, attracting music video directors like Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry, who created experimental and highly stylized commercial works. I put my art on the back burner while I built my career and my family.

In 2001, at the age of 48, 18 months after the birth of my second child, I was diagnosed with stage-three blood cancer with a poor prognosis. With no cure available at the time, I was given a range of five months to five years to live. I closed my business and ended my twenty-year career. I went on the road in search of experimental and new treatments. I found a doctor in Little Rock, Arkansas, with a controversial back-to-back dual stem cell transplant protocol. For three-month-long stints, I lived on canned food in isolation, away from my family. My wife would visit for a week or two but had to leave to care for our twelve-year-old daughter and two-year-old son.

Perhaps my early exposure to avant-garde methods and tools fueled my decision to seek out conventional treatments—my mother had always embraced experimental art and technology. As I began my recovery, I rediscovered art. Using a digital camera and a laptop, I wandered around Little Rock, drawn to liminal spaces such as train yards and graffiti-filled industrial lots. I took thousands of digital photographs alone and in a state of transition myself. Back in my hotel, I carefully assembled collages, using color and shape to move the eye over geometric abstract forms, and integrated organic 2D painted elements. The picture cells grew and divided uncontrollably, much like the cancer in my body. In a series, I photographed my shadow in different places around Little Rock, digitally enhancing the images in surreal tableaux of isolation.

At the time, digital art was gaining traction among a niche audience. In 2002, I participated in Pixel Perfect, my first group show in Chelsea, alongside four other pioneering digital artists; the exhibition marked a significant moment in the burgeoning field of digital art. It reflected my personal journey and the innovative spirit inherited from my mother.

Much of my work has evolved through experimentation. Today, I continue to use photography as a point of origin, layering over the image with other parts of photographs or adding painted layers over an existing image. Technology has always been the ethos of my work, and I continue to adopt and expand my art using new programs and advancements.

As I look to the future, I am excited about AI's possibilities in the art world. However, a part of me holds a Luddite's caution, wary of fully embracing this technological revolution. My deep love for the artist's voice and the power of art as a means to express profound emotional responses keeps me grounded. 

The tension between my fear of technology's potential dangers and my curiosity about its possibilities is the crux where my art most comfortably lies. This tension mirrors my journey with cancer—balancing hope for experimental treatments with the fear of the unknown. Just as I sought unconventional methods to combat my illness, I now navigate the frontier of digital and AI art while maintaining the raw core of my work. Perhaps it is my childhood, rooted in a love of experimentation and curiosity, that I have to thank for the twenty-three years I've spent in remission. Much like my life, my art thrives in the space where the unknown becomes a canvas for healing and creation.