Statement

OLYMPIC PENINSULA SERIES (2023)

Though I was born in Chicago and have lived in New York City for most of my life, I am a life-long camper. Being a citizen of the city offers an interesting perspective on being surrounded by unbridled nature - it always feels somehow foreign, no matter how often I do it, and I’m fascinated by the behavior of other people in the places. Most of all, I’m intrigued by the hard work that humans do to recreate civilization in the wilderness, their attempt, with things like giant RVs, outdoor lighting, television and radios, to efface any sign of the outdoors - cold, heat, bugs, hunger, discomfort - and to make their experience of nature as much like that of their own home as possible. 

As sources for much of the People Being Outside series, I use YouTube videos of family camping trips. Cycling through a video’s still frames allows me to find perfect, unscripted moments of movement. In this and the Mt. Baker series, I have used photographs of my own trips to examine my personal camping habits and relationship to nature. 

For material, I use various cast-off objects, either from my home, or found outside. A cushion with claw marks from a departed cat; my late father’s iPad; dental floss, used clothing, plastic netting from onion bags, LOTS of packaging. Rather than discard these things, I use them as surfaces, and to create texture and shape. In doing this, I am inspired by the ubiquity of garbage in our environment - sometimes in places so far flung you can’t imagine how it got there at all. I find it interesting to use paper packaging to depict people sleeping in the middle of the very forests that are razed in order to create this packaging.

Being in nature gives me unnatural feelings, and my preferred visual metaphor for this experience is the light cast by an unidentified flying object. Bright, colorful light of uncertain origin is almost always present in the scenes I paint, hovering in the distance, barely noticeable, but there. Perhaps this light represents some notion I have of an alternative to the prison-house of the Anthropocene - an other place, which, if not accessible, can at least be glimpsed on occasion.

MT. BAKER SERIES (2023)

For the past few years, I have been using other people’s vacation footage as an inspiration and reference. One day, while looking at a book about the art of Joan Brown, I decided to end that practice - at least for now. I am currently working on a short series of my own traveling experiences, beginning with a trip I took last year to Mt. Baker in Washington state. I find it an interesting challenge to look at my own life for a change, instead of being a voyeur.

PEOPLE BEING OUTSIDE (2019-2023)

I have for years been interested in UFO abduction stories, and while completing my "50 States" series, I kept getting visions of crowds in a natural setting with a UFO hovering. Maybe not an actual object, but some kind of colorful force. Not sure what it all means, but I have been furiously painting depictions of it. Check back later for a more clear description of this series (when I realize myself what it is all about.)

In 2019, I was in a crowded art supply waiting on a long line that stretched down through the textiles aisle. I had never spent any time in this aisle, as I usually only buy painting supplies. I was suddenly transfixed as I imagined what I could create with all of these strange new materials. I grabbed a bag of feathers from the shelf, and the next painting I created used the feathers (stuck to the wooden panel with oil paint) as tree limbs. I loved the effect. From that point on, I have been using anything and everything I can find mixed into my paintings. Painting with just paint seems like a creative lifetime away.  

I exclusively paint with oil. Nothing feels more natural to me than sculpting a surface with a thick helping of pure color. Color is my vehicle for describing the things I'm thinking about, and I often use it in severe ways; whether it be stripping down the natural colors of nature, over-exposing shapes to reveal almost pure white, or obscuring most of the color and using a lot of black.

50 STATES OF BEING OUTSIDE (2018)

I began this latest chapter, "50 States of Being Outside," in February 2018 and completed it in October 2018. After spending the better part of 2017 depicting the way people camp all over the world, I got interested again in outside behavior of the USA people in particular. The 50-painting series is not focused on the landscape or culture of the state painted, but general perceptions of being outside. Some pieces are exciting, many are boring.

CAMPING AROUND THE WORLD (2017-2018)

I love exploring the modern human notion of "the outdoors": camping. When I go camping, I'm intrigued by the way people behave when they are sleeping, eating, and generally behaving while outside. I was very interested in how humans recreationally camp across the world in this modern age, so I started exploring videos from every nook of the globe. Turns out, many people seem to be uncomfortable and bored when outdoors. They also enjoy drinking copious amounts of alcohol.

14 CHARACTERISTICS OF FASCISM (2017)

I have come to realize through these studies that I'm especially absorbed with humans. The political climate of 2016 inspired me to create a series that was inspired by a list I saw churning around the internet. Using the descriptions the author used, I painted his tidy intellectual categorization of human behavior, which was a delightful challenge to situate in a natural outdoor environment.

OIL PAINTINGS OF ANIMALS (2013-2017)

I began this series of oil paintings in 2013 by scrutinizing the relationships human animals have with non-human animals in our shared environment. It started with snakes - humans fear them as deadly enemies, but will also pay to have a stranger wrap one around their neck for a souvenir picture. I find this fascinating. We cast ourselves in many roles as we live together with other animals - savior of threatened species, tamer of the wild, master of the slave.We anthropomorphize them, perform with them to entertain other humans, and stage moments of dominance to assert our physical prowess.

Around 2015, I started to become very interested in the survival behaviors that human and non-human animals display in common. Rendering the motions of behaviors like eating, feeding, finding a mate, and fighting in all animals.