My journey from Hollywood Film production to a Fine Arts practice has been shaped by theory from Philosophy of Mind, Cognitive Psychology, Film, and Art, leading me to a new visual vocabulary at the intersection of motion picture, the still image, and three-dimensional form. I create large mixed media collages by projecting video onto photographs and sculptural forms, breaking the boundaries of the conventional film frame and exceeding the dynamic range of typical visual experience. My work explores emotional connections and fissures within family, and hidden meanings of haunting memories and familiar places. I am searching for an elusive type of perceptual experience characterized by an instantaneous shift in perspective—an "aha" moment of epiphany when suddenly I have the overpowering feeling that I am both seeing and aware that I am seeing.

A house is a place of safety. A home is a place of belonging. Though different a house always desires to become a home, but it can only be so through a connection to self. It is a home that is an extension of one's identity. Through the mirror, which is the home, and through an understanding of schema theory a person's being can be understood through one's ideas, place, self, family, rituals, memories, and feelings. Each of these factors act as a layer of brick building a strong foundation or a crackling fireplace adorned with family portraits making the rooms feel cozy for the image of the home as well as self. Exploring the melancholic drawings, paintings, sculptures, and installations the relationship of self and place become more evident thus separating what is a house from a home. It becomes clear that the definition of home does not come from its physical boundaries but from the thoughts and interactions that reside within its walls. A joyous person creates a joyous home and a melancholic home creates an artist that is inclined to create melancholic art in search of what they don't have. It is along this emotional journey the artist can truly understand what this sense of belonging means. Through his art the worn wallpaper and the cracked plaster of this darker world hold in the emotions of the artist showcasing the authenticity of self and opening a door for others in a similar search.

This writing accompanies the outcomes of my studio practice over the last three years, focusing on two bodies of work of paintings and drawings. In it I describe and analyze multiple influences tied to the progression and change in my studio practice. I began the process of my work with images and subjects from my home state of Florida, frequently juxtaposing the wildlife and humans, now I see this pattern as a byproduct of a studio practice functioning as a introspective reflection of what I experience, the things that I understand and the things that I don't. I deconstruct elements of figures and landscape, removing most information but what is necessary to retain symbolic context, and allow physical windows into the past formal states of the work, exposing the audience to different periods of time and hinting at information now hidden under the finished image.

In this thesis body of work, I focus on the implied human presence through the lack of actual human figures. I believe there is more to say in a landscape with the absence of the figure, allowing the dialogue to be read and interpreted by a larger audience. I am particularly satisfied with White Knuckles, shown in figure 3, because I collide reason with imagination, thus contradicting the context and interpretation of the subject matter. In White Knuckles, I deal with formal elements such as composition, atmosphere, lightness and darkness as well as nuances of color. I have also considered the emotive impact the painting could reflect to the viewer, specifically feelings of tension and unease. The placement of the viewer outside the picture plane was carefully considered to suggest the audience is a participant in the suggested narrative. I often strive to create an ambiguous moment, reflecting feelings of uncertainty and apprehension. Like White Knuckles, my body of work employs unexpected narratives to reveal some of the uncomfortable truths of our human experience. I am interested in exploring the relationship between the mundane and the abnormal in the paintings, a feeling that could be described as a "suburban nightmare."

This thesis is an examination of my imperative need to understand dinosaurs and their role in science and art, acting as prehistoric symbols for science and imagination. Like our understanding of dinosaurs, my body of work is evolving simultaneously with the technology of our time. Through the synthesis of artistic language with science and technology, I create dynamic experiences allowing a viewer to witness an extinct living being in its entirety, an otherwise lost experience. By utilizing digital modeling, animation techniques, and interactive video games, my work speaks to the power and diversity of digital media's role in visualizing artifacts in our society and culture.

The absurd perpetual struggle, although entirely without hope of resolution, is the key to life's meaning, or perhaps, meaninglessness. The artist must work to live and live to work and find their place in an absurd world. Find joy in the questioning act of art making, make no attempt to escape the meaninglessness through pacifism, and face the chaos with awareness. I employ self-portraiture as a means to dig deeply into my experience and response to living. Self-portraiture morphs along with my experiences and keeps a record of my thought patterns. My body of work is the harvest of my seeds of reflection. Tying together past influences, existential questioning, and a Sisyphean philosophy to a life of art making, I unravel the inner outcomes of my studio practice. It is in retrospect, through distance, that these connections are fully realized.

Reflecting upon humanity's obligatory use of technology and its place in our collective evolution has become my endeavor. These reflections happen in a studio and through a process that influences the fine art objects produced. In turn the objects both celebrate and warn us of the dynamic and immanent enhanced human. I balance the use of modern machining processes with dark humor to comment and raise questions about the coexistence of man and machine in an increasingly absurd environment.

Using a feminist media historical lens, this dissertation examines three women artist-illustrators who participated in the early twentieth century wood engraving revival in the United Kingdom: Gwen Raverat (1885-1957), Clare Leighton (1898-1989), and Joan Hassall (1906-1988). Little scholarship exists on the wood engraving revival from a feminist media or book history perspective. To fill this gap, I examine the biographies of these women and the books and magazines they illustrated in their historical context, with attention to how their gender impacted their experience. This dissertation finds that women's participation in the wood engraving revival is significant because it afforded opportunities for women to become professional artists through a medium that had previously been controlled by men. They influenced print culture domestically and globally by illustrating political and literary magazines to broaden their visual appeal and by illustrating a variety of fiction that reflected how commercial publishing was being impacted by the "Book Beautiful" movement. This research further reveals how social networks and institutions played a complex role in the careers of women artist-illustrators in this period, and, as a result, in the development of the book in the twentieth century.

The oeuvre of the Belgian painter James Ensor was populated with grotesque imagery and charged with an intense personal vision. In light of these aspects of his style, Ensor's best known paintings, created during the 1880's, are cited as seminal examples of modern Expressionism popularized in the early decades of the twentieth century. However, Ensor's art also exists within a specific cultural context that adds meaning and further significance to the work. Renowned early Flemish painters Hieronymus Bosch (c.1450-1516) and Pieter Bruegel (1529-1569) created works that share points of form and content with Ensor. Recognizing the relationship of Ensor to his precursors is crucial to understanding his works, many of which relate to regional, national, and political identity. A detailed analysis of how the Flemish art of the past informs Ensor will form a foundation from which I will then proceed to provide a full view of the intellectual intent and personal experiences that underlie his unique style. A crucial point of reference for this study is the concept of the carnivalesque articulated by Russian literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin's (1895-1975) in his important work, Rabelais and His World (I 965). This concept serves as a bridge connecting the earlier Renaissance painters Bosch and Bruegel to Ensor.

Considering the extent of process in the following bodies of work is one way to approach its evaluation. Putting forth a well-rounded discussion that accurately accounts for its intention and coinciding successful effort asks that the set up of defense not be merely argumentative. The diversity of size, media and inspiration have created several, still ongoing, bodies of work that reflect each other in motivation, but whose outcome speak to a progressive clarity