Artist Statement

For much of my career I have used the conceptual space of maps, extensive research, and a painter’s vocabulary, to abstractly visualize information about historic and contemporary topics and events. I combine media including painting, collage, drawing, and printmaking to make works that vary in size from the diminutive dimensions of a children’s atlas page to paintings over twelve feet wide. Rather than using the concise and analytical languages of data visualization and cartography, I explore subjects and information employing a charged and expressive visual vocabulary that is likely to evoke an emotional, visceral, and palpable response.

For me, a series often begins with a question followed by research to learn about topics related to the question. I start looking for answers, and begin making art to discover ways to represent this visually. For example, one series began with recognizing the deep sorrow I felt when thinking about how much war and conflict there is in the world, followed by the realization that I had no idea how much there actually was. I began to research layer upon layer of information on this grim subject, with each discovery leading to more data. I took extensive notes and began exploring ways to visualize this complex subject in notebooks and atlases, and eventually created the large body of work, Current Wars and Conflicts.

I began to incorporate maps into my work in the early 1990s while thinking about the upcoming quincentennial of what was euphemistically referred to as “The First Encounter.” Since then, I have focused on subjects including wars and their consequences, borders, boundaries, and their effects on populations. For example, recent ongoing series investigate colonialism (Chronicle and Contest). imperialism (US Future States Atlas), land claims (Magallanica, a series on Antarctica), wars and displacement (Current Wars and Conflicts), colonialism and indigenous cultures (What’s in a Name? and Amazon Region), and inequities of fulfilling the American dream (Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness).