THE CASINO
The series was conceived with the idea that a casino is an apt metaphor for living life in America now. In both, there is each individual’s invitation and journey to participate, the hope to win, the fear of losing, the necessary understanding of strategy, or the lack thereof, and a relationship with the systemic. This thought developed into a surrealist visual story where, in unreadable darkness, games of chance have been set up, with commanding, flashy neon and classical statues to lure players in. Within them is also a reflection on my own understanding and living with surviving a stroke in 2022, and the mental negotiations one makes with health. They simultaneously revere the magnitude of the chances we take in life (small and big) and serve as an absurd, cautionary odyssey of the systems we participate with.
RECOLOGIES
"We will all watch the spectacle of climate change as ecologies continue to respond to things they've never encountered" was a jarring statement to hear on a radio interview. From that, this idea came to pose myself as a future, traveling, plein air landscape artist, who is trying to capture these mixing ecosystems in a stiff, traditional, folk art landscape way. Fungi grow bigger than aver where they can now feed off a new river like deer at a stream. Bubbles emerge and escape from deep within an iceberg where they have been hidden for millennia. A coral reef lies bleached and posed in a pastoral brook like a Shakespearean martyr.
IMAGINED PORTRAITURE
Figure paintings done from imagination.
FIELDS
Peace is often depicted as smoothness and simplicity in the absence of texture. Overly textured objects in general are something we distance ourselves from more and more to adhere ourselves to simplicity and cleanliness. For these pieces, I wanted to embrace the ironies within all of that, a 2D painting of a 3D texture, a seemingly neutral rectangle until you get close, apparent repetition to make something ultimately quiet.
PRIVATE COMMISSIONS / OTHER WORK
