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Statement

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In the 1800s, the death of God and the invention of photography coincided with the dislocation of painting from the political, economic, and social roles it played for thousands of years. Since then, advancing technology has left painting on its own branch of the cultural evolutionary tree. Painting cannot compete with digital platforms in sharing information and ideas. Paintings sit quietly on a wall. If you wish to see one, you must travel to it. 

 

Unlike the past, artists today aren't beholden to a style, government, or religious institution unless they choose to be. That is not to say the stakes have lessened for painting as an artform. Today, anyone can paint how they wish in the open. This freedom is the starting point, resulting in the plurality and multitude of content emerging on canvas today. The art world seems to be a prolific yet aimless producer of images.  

 

It might be a passing thought or image in my mind that leads to a series. It may be the landscape. It could come from a relationship. The filter which these thoughts and emotions travel through is paint. Many paintings are in progress at once to keep momentum and avoid being precious about individual pieces. 

Much of the time spent in the studio is meditative, with problems of color, composition, or subject solved in silence. Silence eventually causes boredom, and boredom can cause destruction. Destroying via scraping, sanding, and erasing leads to solutions. 

I repaint my surfaces many times for days or years. This disorder is inherited from Cezanne, Picasso, Soutine, Giacometti, and Guston - under the finished surface, stratified histories of other images lay entombed. My process gives me a creative freedom where I arrive at solutions free of my preconceived notions of what a picture should be. 

As an artist, I strive to be more a guide than a preacher. I don't want my paintings to tell the viewer what to think. I want them to be an open invitation to think. .

In this way, art is a foil to the techno-narcotics we are addicted to.    

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I hope you enjoy my pictures and find meaning and mystery in them. 

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