My work explores the politics of war and its influence on popular culture. During the Kosovo conflict of the late '90s, I was struck by the use of rape as a war tactic and torture method. I began combining images of pornography and combat to examine the interaction of sexual energy and the military. Recently, observing the limited place of the bare human form in the world today, and the extreme differences in tolerance for skin exposure between Western and Muslim cultures, I decided to create a series of works where nude figures would coexist with visual themes from contemporary media sources.

Using the naked and overtly sexual body as a montage element, I draw on a wide spectrum of contrasting images including military iconography such as soldiers, aircraft and camouflage patterns, as well as consumer goods, and details from the natural world. Some of my recent work includes pictures of prisoners from the Abu Ghraib scandal, what I think of as pornography produced by the military, among other sexed-up allusions that include both male and female figures. While there are hues of human subjugation and exploitation in some of my work, I am not drawing particular conclusions but rather creating conflations of power dynamics rendered in a profusion of color and symbols.

In addressing our culture of consumption, I study the form and function of automobiles and other status objects and their relationship to excess, as well as the mounting crisis of global warming. Both military and pop culture references are merged into a representation of synthetic culture - the old and new, high and low, sublime and vile of a technological world in overdrive. Using acrylics, I employ a manmade, manipulated process to juxtapose diverging aspects of a world that is itself humanly manipulated. In place of a dominant central image, I often employ a chaotic all-over composition, with recurring figures, or similar objects repeated to create a landscape where abstraction meets porn stars and women in burkhas, and where birds in flight mingle with armed aircraft.

My work is tied together by the ever-changing theme of current events. Like the ongoing barrage of media updates provided by NPR, CNN, The New York Times, and other media outlets, my work weaves together seemingly disparate elements of domestic and foreign politics to engage in a dialogue on canvas and paper.