Statement

I work to unearth the emotional resonance of a subject with oil paint and non-traditional materials. Selecting for qualities that call the body’s senses into action, these materials rarely represent themselves. Instead, pearlescent shells, creeping fibers, or dazzling glitter give the effect of dappled light or pond muck. I dunk objects into paint and manipulate them as an act of alchemy where something new emerges. This experimental ethos, shared with a lineage of post-minimal abstractionists, allows me to weave webs of connection that ponder the nature of reality.

While material exploration drives the resulting painting, observational memories are my initial source. They provide me with a compositional structure that I simplify to clear a path to what I am trying to reveal. I like to create iterations of the same composition. Through repetition unnecessary details fall off, leaving only the true subject. I find kinship with observationalists like Lois Dodd who use the world around them to unlock contemplative questions. 

This process is digestive. I absorb the experiences of life and let them stew inside of me to be released as something transformed. What was external is macerated down into internal visions. The forms and patterns that appear in my work are like sunspots under my eyelid, seen only by closing my eyes and looking. I excavate for where the light of the world merges with my own light.

My paintings ask, what is under the surface, under the skin? Like religious icons that were created as objects of purpose I make them to give effect and be affecting. To live as verbs. My work is of the earth and womb, smelling like rotting meadows or sea crust, and equally, the cosmos, disco, dust and debris. I am making my own kind of icon.