This body of work began as I was considering the value of a study over a final painting.

When viewing studies by the artist Albrecht Dürer, I was struck by the intense scrutiny of the subject involved, something which I found missing in his approach to his final paintings. Durer conveys, in his studies, a real understanding of the mechanics regarding human form. This focus on a single subject, this removal of the surrounding context, allows the viewer to truly concentrate on what's important, in a sense cutting out white noise and unneeded interference.

In a lot of this series, I have not only removed the background of the image, but sometimes parts of the subject itself in order to focus properly on what I deem integral, allowing the image to float in a void of raw material.