artist statement

Abstraction is the most intuitive way for me to explore the sensorial aspect of living. Manipulating the formal elements of color, line, shape, and composition is the way that I process these sensations and explore ideas and concepts such as the connection between space, movement, and time, as well as the landscape, maps, memory, and the body.

I begin painting with acrylic for its quick drying qualities, and primarily use hot and bright colors that will vibrate relative to subsequent layers of color that reference the landscape. Once I’m pleased with the surface of the painting in acrylic, I continue with oil paint to further build the surface and to play with color, edge, shape, and spatial relationships. I also use pigment sticks for their immediacy and tactile paint handling that feels more like drawing. Drawing plays an important role in my practice. My small watercolor and ink drawings are an exercise in meditation and quiet concentration, and act as a foil to my more gestural paintings. In these I can quickly and succinctly explore ideas that interest me. In my finished paintings, I look for a play between awkwardness and the sublime with a sense of history to the layers of paint. I’m amazed at the dichotomy between gestural paint handling and the illusion of space which emerges sometimes as if by magic.