Artist Statement
My passion for drawing and painting began when I was a young child in Chicago and still remains with me. I’ve painted with oils, work with pen and ink, but now I am concentrating my attention to scratchboard art.
Utilizing the scratchboard process is ideal for my “perfectionist” nature. There is no forgiveness in this tedious medium – one wrong scratch or errant stroke - the drawing may be ruined.
Scratchboard art is as much of a game as a skill. The skill is to manipulate and/or stimulate the observer. The game is to not let the observer feel they are being manipulated, tricked or coerced. To the artist the creative process is both relaxing and genuinely original in a way beyond description. Without color, this has induced both a challenge and satisfaction for that tests your innate skills.
I learned years ago that scratchboard art is both a simple and a complex process. It’s “Simple” because you can concentrate and focus on the subject while leaving much of the background open. It’s “Complex” because there is always the question of what to eliminate; what to accentuate; and what to observe and focus on.
The images I draw stimulate the observer’s eye and brain in a way that fills in the missing pieces without allowing them to make bold or presumptuous statements. Since the scratchboard technique leaves out parts or substantial parts of all images, it demands the observer to compare the visual to the images’ total result.
My hero has always been the 16th century artist Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio who practiced the “Conquer of Light”. One of my goals is to emphasize the most prominent and vital part of scratchboard and its intrinsic extreme contrasts between black and white. Only with this can the observer fully understand and capture its essence. I do not necessarily want to conquer the light, but to surround it and contain it in place.
All of these challenges with scratchboard art appeals to my adventurous side, and the big reward is the WOW on someone’s face when they see the final drawing.
