Statement

My work explores themes of shifting space such as air currents, sound-waves, the cosmos (spectral analysis/ subatomic particles/ matter), wifi, mobile data, and especially light. I’m not illustrating these interests, they’re feeding the work & influencing my methods, material choices and my approach to making paintings. I paint what exists between the eye and what is being observed; turning the invisible into something visible.

Translucent layers of lines and shapes create a joint imagery as well as separate imageries that rest on top, in between and underneath. Layers shift between foreground, middle and background. This shift of figure/ground creates an instability and references the surge of information in daily life and layering of history and passage of time, the physics of light and matter, as well as simultaneous, multiple states of existence. Moments are frozen in each layer of the painting as a way to process and illustrate change, metamorphosis, journey. While working, my marks respond to the marks in layers below the working surface. One can view the history of process and decision-making. The repetition of layering transforms the painting as it’s made and viewed. It’s a kind of built-in history, a structure with improvisation.

I pay attention to the mechanics of painting while maintaining an experimental approach. I continue to make the gestural, controlled, linear layered pieces, however I am becoming increasingly fascinated with how paint moves and self-organizes. My impulse is to let it free, use gravity and force to release the pent up energy within the linear beads of pulled paint (marks left from pulling my carved tools across the surface) into unexpected blasts & bursts of color and form. In some paintings, I incorporate gravity and force to move paint across the substrate. Wet, painted stripes surge and break into an organized chaos of marks and color. I’m guiding the paint, but the work exists between chance & intent. It’s important to let these paintings take on their own seemingly random direction.

My current painting series, Cusp, references the tumultuous times we’re all experiencing. Some layers in these paintings were started and/or completed before, during, and since the beginning of the pandemic and political unrest. The layers are frozen moments of these different states in our collective history. Cusp is also a reference to my studio practice — the physical marks in my work are a literal definition: ‘a pointed end where two curves meet’ and metaphorically as a point of transition in my studio work.