Artist Statement
I'm looking for a different way to paint shapes and it's best when I arrive at them from the inside out, without any preliminary drawing or outline. My paintings have come to be indirect extractions of landscapes or objects: I'm cutting a slice out of a landscape that includes the sky, part of the hill and a shadow. Objects are governed by a skewed version of gravity and perspective. I want my subjects to be proxies that can move in and out of contexts. I look for colors that obscure and diffuse my creation of an illusion of space. Working within a set of parameters provides a specificity that allows me to be intuitive. I begin a painting knowing the scale of the shapes I want to include, and the color for the under-painting that I have mixed in preparation. The rest of my process is a game of fitting the shapes and colors into the space without implying a world beyond the edges. Everything happens in this picture. Each decision modifies the previous decision and shifts the painting in a different direction. Adding a new color could cause me to scrape down everything around it. One mark can shift the spatial illusion and the entire painting works differently.
I often walk around taking snapshots looking for moments when colors and materials clash, and result in perceptual shifts. I want to hold onto the moment when my senses somehow deceive me. When I paint, I create systems detached from my normal experience in order to reference these moments.
Photographs