Testimonial

My art is an equilibrium between my experience with nature and the interaction with my materials and process. My aim is to enact a set of painterly circumstances that does not try to replicate nature directly, but rather reflect its endless complexity. In essence my goal as an image maker is to synthesize the layered colors and textures that are so eloquently expressed in the natural world, while avoiding any attempt at describing or replicating a particular encounter. I do not desire to capture nature in a narrative sense, but instead articulate an alignment of characteristics that can be communicated in a non objective approach to art making.

My paintings and mixed media works are predicated by color and reflect an obsessive curiosity with the physical expressivity of paint.Whether poured onto a surface or traditionally applied by a brush, directly interacting with the inherent properties of paint is what defines my approach. Once initiated a painting becomes a process of sustained interaction, one where applied paint is subsequently pushed, pulled, or raked into place. Expressed as a thin wash or viscous smear, paint presented as paint is for me the most communicative and the most eloquent. A non objective residence, an abstract iconography allows me a truthfulness in both process and product.

I feel that experiencing a forest, like seeing an artwork, is to perceive a constructed truth. Both realities must speak out on their own terms…those which predicate their existence and those which fulfill their primary purpose. In a certain way a great forest stands as an ultimate abstraction…an accumulation of unseen vital forces that can only be truly appreciated if taken in as a completion…an interwoven totality that is more than the sum of its parts. A dismembered forest, something quarried up for its salient assets has lost its original and meaningful purpose to the living Earth. Like slicing out any particular part of a completed painting, the forrest once cut can never be reconstituted. By creating images of interdependently composed colors, patterns, and textures I hope to create a metaphor of natural serenity…and in that moment of artistic contemplation perhaps a deeper respect for nature will emerge.

As a non-objective artist inspired by nature, color in my work is both subject matter and metaphor. The infinite variety of complex patterns dressed in spectral color found throughout the natural world is fundamental to my practice as an image maker.