These works came about at the intersection of two different ideas about pushing my creativity in a new direction.

The Figure
I have always enjoyed drawing the human figure since my first Life Drawing class in art school. While the bulk of my artistic production over the years has been abstract paintings, the joy of drawing the human form and the beauty of those organic shapes and lines have been quietly but persistently waiting to re-emerge.

The Format
Looking at an empty CD jewel box one day, I thought it had great potential as a format for making art. The work would be done on the inside, and have an instant frame. As a format, it would be small, direct, approachable, and friendly in a familiar way. I looked at that CD case on my desk for a year before beginning to make art with it. The modular aspect of this format is also very appealing; the variety of possible configurations in which they can be assembled is endless.

Model Behavior
Although the strength of traditional, classic drawings of the human figure is how they express the human condition, the models depicted tend to remain anonymous while they suggest universal attributes. In making the figurative pieces shown here, it was a lot of fun selecting text, clipped from newspaper articles, to work with each particular piece, and the end result is a more specific characterization of individual personalities evoking humor, pathos, or mystery. At the same time, in these phrases we recognize ourselves or others we have known, extending the specific back again to the universal. The overall title for this series, Model Behavior, refers not only to these individuals' attitudes and activities, but also suggests that some of these (and by extension, our own) attitudes and activities are very noble, and some are less so.