Art Statement

My hope is to make tender, paradoxically harmonic paintings that may be inexplicable and yet speak.

Spirits of Inquiry

**Parts of the Universe Observing Itself**

Spirits of Inquiry

These paintings are little inquiries into the puzzles of existence. They utilize the intimacy of the small scale, where image and emotion may more quickly fuse, and where the restricted size of the picture plane may present a world both limited and infinite by its very self-containment. They attempt to express, in a gentle human hum, that time feels both quick and deep, love eternal and fleeting, memory firm and faded, and the sublime present and remote. At one moment one has access to realms of the numinous, at other times life presents as an assemblage of hard facts and suffering. We exist in connection to others, but slip into alienation. It is a wonder that an invented image, a bit of reformulated matter, speaks at all to another human being. And yet, we all see creatively and live within and through an interpretation of the world. Slices of perception reach out: the language of colors, intimations of shared experiences, of symbols and shapes giving rise to memories and emotions. I hope these small paintings speak to the varieties of human experience, and find form for something meaningful and magical to another human mind.

Statues of Liberty

This series considers the Statue of Liberty as a formal consideration, a narrative prompt, and an occupiable persona. The paintings move between representation, abstraction, and symbolism, exploring the monument as both a wished for ideal of safe harbor, a reminder of the United States historically flawed record on the acceptance and treatment of immigrants, and the ongoing appalling crimes against humanity being perpetrated here and worldwide.

Earth Suits | and | History + Hope

Earth Suits

Where do they begin and where do they end? And how does an invented image, a bit of reformulated matter, say anything at all to another human being? All sensory experience is an exercise in imagined content – we all see and live within and through an interpretation of “reality” - a “controlled hallucination” (Anil Seth). And given that other sentient beings must also survive and thrive through variations on such interpretive brain predictions, we must to some extent experience analogous sensory perceptions. Are we ever fully separate?

All my paintings are vehicles for such contemplation on the puzzles of existence, of nature and the processes of looking, language acquisition, and image recognition as tools to access the world, and, in the case of my figurative work (human and otherwise), for ponderings on life and death, the physics of free will or the mechanics of fate.

Utilizing the complementarity of abstraction and representation, geometric forms may combine with organic, curious, and accidental shapes to make inferences to recognizable forms, while rendered objects fuse, morph, or sit juxtaposed with abstract shapes. I attempt to express that time feels both quick and deep, love eternal and fleeting, memory firm and faded, and the sublime present and remote.

We have evolved and discovered because we can think in irrational and creative ways and allow our minds to ramble the landscape of the imagined. My hope is to make tender, paradoxically harmonic paintings that, while perhaps not fully explicable, speak to these varieties of conscious experience. I hope they honor the biological beauty of life, and find form for something meaningful to another mind, in another Earth Suit.

History + Hope

The History + Hope paintings have their genesis in my ongoing Earth Suits paintings, and speak specifically to our species both coexistence and conflict with nature in the context of history, plunder, migration, and the hope for remediation and change.

Spirits of Inquiry

SERIES

BY WAY OF VESSELS