Pictures from Storyville

In the spring of 2000 after visiting Pompeii for the first time I was, perhaps haunted is too strong a word, but very moved by the experience. Returning to my studio in New York I embarked on a re-exploration of drawing the body.

For me, the body is akin to a landscape, and this is in part how I approached the largest pieces in the show.

The tattoo element was partly fortuitous in that there has been a trend towards body ornamentation over the past two decades and so models and friends who came to studio for sittings would sometimes have tattoos and often added more over the course of my making the works.

I became aware during the sittings that I was redrawing someone else's drawing on another surface, a sort of palimpsest. In some instances I have erased the figure leaving only the tattoo to convey the presence of the body.