The paintings above are from a series of 100 (which are not for sale but from which I would like to produce limited edition prints in the future); you can read more about this work below.  They are representative of other Bratty paintings I have in my studio.  I tend to work in thematic series and have surf paintings, including Surf Angels (see bottom of the page and click thru) and images of a lost nostalgic childhood from say the 30's and 40's era, as well as circus and clown based paintings. I do enjoy landscapes which are sometimes incorporated into these other works.  I also paint  in oil.  And I am working on some large sculptures with an eye towards the large multi-media arts installation SuperBrattyFlowerPower which I have been working on since 2005.  I am happy to offer you a studio visit!  Just ask.

so Bratty!

From 2005 to 2007, I created a series of 100 paintings which explore my “inner brat”, a clown-like trickster figure with a wide emotional range, rendered in neo-expressive gestural paintings done with my non-dominant hand. These “inner brats” are intimately tied to my own specific issues surrounding reproduction, feminism and voice, as well as to broader cultural issues regarding artificial life forms, avatars, robots and the loss of nature.  I am at work on a large circus-like installation ("SuperBrattyFlowerPower") which explores the fantastical worlds of the Brats using paintings, large-scale sculpture and re-imagined furniture as theatrical settings with which to playfully explore the roles of agent, author and audience. 

The carnivalesque and the grotesque feature strongly in the Brat series, as I am deeply interested in a riotous multiplicity of voices and re-writing the traditional subject/object relationship in favor of a panpsychic universe.  Indeed, “brattiness” need not apply only to humans – what happens with young posthumans such as avatars, robots and intelligent agents as they learn to respond to our so-called “real world”?  My doctoral research into 3D virtual worlds and new forms of emotional and artificial intelligence tells me that we have not yet understood our responsibilities in having engendered these posthuman life forms.  The Brat series empathizes with these emergent subjects in raw and unmediated terms; Brats are not merely ‘product’ but also ‘persons’ with strong, and often unruly feelings.  The series examines the emotional arcs of childhood, innocence and nostalgia, and explores the devastating effects of giving up on the magical and spontaneous in favor of the repressive realpolitik of various social institutions.

My studies of ecstatic dance and of clowning based on the Pochinko method are major influences; Pochinko is a Canadian form of clowning I have studied with John Turner which weds Native American, European and American circus techniques.  It is not clowning intended for children;  rather, with political commentary, satire and sharp observation, it digs deep into the trenches of the psyche, surveying the spectrum from absolute innocence to total venality and everything in between.  A few classic clown archetypes appear in the series, notably the holy fool, a figure well known to Zen and various indigenous knowledges, and the Joey/Auguste pair who explore power relations in constantly evolving variations.  Unsurprisingly then, performance is also a key element of the Brat work.

Trained as an art historian, having spent many years writing art criticism, and operating in the arts in virtually every capacity other than “artist,” it has been a tremendous relief to wrench open the floodgates of my own artistic production and rejoice in what has come gushing out.  I am influenced by such divergent artists as Picasso, Calder, Beuys, Warhol, de Saint Phalle, Abramovic, Wilke, Basquiat, Koons, Kiki Smith and Murakami.  In 2001, I received a substantial grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts to pursue my virtual worlds work and only recently closed my world, “TCWF” (Tobey Crockett’s Wild Frontier) after seven years of exploration.  I have exhibited various media in group shows at the Beall Center, NYU, the Bremen Kunsthalle and other smaller venues.  I have a BA in Art History from Barnard, an MA in Critical Theory from the Art Center College of Design and a PhD in Visual Studies from UC Irvine.