I am a self-taught animator building on my photographic skill set. I use motion and optics, both experienced through a camera lens, to generate the initial framework of the video. The use of a collage style approach encourages additions and subtractions that take the work into a plausible fiction. That new world references reality but visits fantastical environments where giant blooms that start as zinnias, hydrangeas, cosmos or fig leaves are floating in a sea of color. When the sky is a mustard color but the plants and movement they take are familiar, the viewer can choose to try to make sense of it all or to just go with the reprieve and beauty they are seeing momentarily.
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These films are all around a minute in length which means the pleasure is brief but hopefully, special. Each individual frame is hand-colored, layered over videos I take in my local environment. ​​​​
Often the choices are mundane plants, not exotic in any way, initially. The use of line is increasingly important as a visual tool by leading the eye horizontally as a cross current and new player in the frame.
Abstract experimental animations from makers like Len Lye and Harry Smith are influences of mine along with numerous other filmmakers, cartoonists and commercial animators where I am often analyzing the background more than the action to see how the eye travels in and through the frame.
At this time, I have completed ten short experimental films and am currently working on a narrative piece whose subject is a personal relationship to flowers, a British artist named Mary Delany from the 1700's, in conjunction with my painted photographic works.