Statement
One focus of mine has been on landscapes and creating a fantasy of dialectic relationships between the sky and the ground. That’s been my primary concern for the past three years. This has transferred into a study on the power of clouds and the imagination. I’m also interested in ideas of fiction and fantasy and how those ideas exist in pop-culture and subliminally in our perceptions of reality and current moods of thought. One last thing I want to mention is my interest in folk arts as a way of using well known methods of art making to reinterpret the nature of painting and sculpture, as well as notions of the readymade and simulations in contemporary art.
My technique is primarily influenced by Abstract Expressionism and most of my work is created with that same sense of urgency, simulated amateurism, raw emotion, and reliance on intuition. However, some of my most impactful influences have come from installation art, illustration and graphic arts, narrative film, cultural theory, and many other painters throughout history.
Media such as polymer and latex based paints, string, hardware, junk mail, plastics, and other “trash” from my studio, all seem to interact in my work, reflecting my interest in the body and modern society’s technological hybrids of organic and synthetic. Paper and plastics or nails, twine, and glue often construct and hold together the assemblages of my work. The refuse I utilize often comes from the art making process or reflects the art world: including exhibition announcements, museum literature, supply’s labels, and other packaging. And if they are unrelated materials that do not reflect the sometimes unwanted or dismissible images and objects of the art world, than they are remnants of me, pieces of my history reused, redefined, and recording a portrait of myself, the artist.