March 2006- Click here to see the creation of this work.

At the beginning of February I discovered my wife was pregnant. This was completely planned but a massive shock none-the-less. The realization my body took part in creating another body and I was driven to create this new body by animal instinct, led to this image. I spend a considerable amount of my time "being" in my head. So, I spend an awful lot of time away from my body, that is, the animal eating farting oily thing I pay little attention to except to keep running smoothly so my head can in fact deny it. Now I wrote a moment ago that my animal instinct led me to procreate. My head would like to believe this is not really true, and that my head made this decision. I have compelling reasons to believe my head; however my head also tells me I was tricked by my body. Anyway, this image is a kind of general image of/for discovering I am a 28-year-old-barely-employed- making-art-down-in-the-basement-who's-about-to-become-a-father-to-a-new- human-being-with-it's-own-brain-and-ability-to-think man.

In this painting I am naked (my socks make me naked and not nude [it's an art history thing]) just like my dogs (they don't have collars, but even so, you could argue they are not naked but nude) standing in my spare room where I keep my books and paintings. I am overweight, and have been for a number of years, but my fat looks different, hair continues to spread and grow across new planes of my body, and I no longer have any doubts about my genitals' function and functionality. I am modeling for an upcoming painting (not necessarily this one). My dog Cole sniffs his sister's (not by birth though) ass, who is looking up at me quizzically. My natural behavior is just as puzzling to my dogs as their natural behavior is to me. Though my head likes to tell me my work is a cerebral exercise made possible only by the technological and social developments of the past millennia, my exploration is not too far off from sniffing ass, that is, my own, other artist's, etc. I too am simply trying to figure out what's going on like my dogs.

I was somewhat influenced by Degas' painting "The Rape" in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I also had in mind Nicollo Dell' Arca's "Lamentation" group from the Church of Santa Maria della Vita in Bologna.