THERE IS NOT MUCH that I can add that someone hasn't more eloquently declared elsewhere about the Figure and its prominence in Art, globally. We humans like to make pictures, and we find our own human selves to be compelling subjects. Since the birth of photography, we have continued this love of portraiture, and FaceBook and YouTube preserve our fascination with sharing whatever we can visually about human selves, however fragile the media

ARTISTS also find the act of making a picture just as compelling. Everywhere there are visual artists, someone is running a Life Room, an Open Figure Studio, or hiring a model privately, or snatching quick figure gestures in a public place. Whenever I have no idea what to do artistically, I return to life drawing from a live model, obligingly holding one pose while I draw, collage, or paint. For me, this process is an end in itself. The products -these works on view here- go out to join the hundreds of human images circulating the globe in all media. Some last for centuries, some leave the public view with the artist. No matter, more will be created. The subject matter keeps its allure.

A NOTE ABOUT THE PROCESS: gesture drawings are rapid, one to twenty-minute sketches of a single pose. Collages were made from a single pose held for three hours, using origami papers and cut up old art books. The stencils were created from original film photographs shot by the artist and enlarged through projection. After much functional use, these stencils became their own works of art, worth viewing on their own.

MANY THANKS: to all my fine teachers at the Gage Academy, my outstanding framers Carey and David and all the gang at Allison and Ross, and tech support from ADG and certain members at Gallery North.