I am primarily a painter. I use a thin plastic material to make thickly encrusted oil paintings that appear to exist directly on the wall.
My style hovers between representation and abstraction, and most of my imagery comes from dated and mass-produced nature and science book sets, reference books, and textbooks. In my youth I devoured these materials, looking for representations of the natural world; the images contained were burned upon my memory. The pictures portrayed views and experiences which were not my own, but as I digested them, they became a part of my personal visual lexicon. I enjoyed that these images reference the Romantic concepts of Nature and the Sublime; though due to their origins they are mediated versions that reflect our shared non-experience. I now use these clippings as starting points for paintings.
In translating all of this imagery to paint, I am attempting to re-imagine minor, forgotten, mass-produced images as things that are new, singular, and permanent. The final goal is to produce a painting that generates as intense of an experience as possible; to impart a presence that defies their scale, and to fill them with a density and a pressure that can only exist in this kind of format. The results are works that oscillate between a maudlin naiveté and a serious, desperate search for something in painting that is worth renewing.
A native of Oklahoma, I have lived, worked, and taught in New Orleans since 2005. My work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and my work is a part of the permanent collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art, as well as many private collections. I am a founding member of The Front, a gallery in New Orleans that is a cornerstone of the St Claude scene - the only completely artist-run gallery district in America.
My style hovers between representation and abstraction, and most of my imagery comes from dated and mass-produced nature and science book sets, reference books, and textbooks. In my youth I devoured these materials, looking for representations of the natural world; the images contained were burned upon my memory. The pictures portrayed views and experiences which were not my own, but as I digested them, they became a part of my personal visual lexicon. I enjoyed that these images reference the Romantic concepts of Nature and the Sublime; though due to their origins they are mediated versions that reflect our shared non-experience. I now use these clippings as starting points for paintings.
In translating all of this imagery to paint, I am attempting to re-imagine minor, forgotten, mass-produced images as things that are new, singular, and permanent. The final goal is to produce a painting that generates as intense of an experience as possible; to impart a presence that defies their scale, and to fill them with a density and a pressure that can only exist in this kind of format. The results are works that oscillate between a maudlin naiveté and a serious, desperate search for something in painting that is worth renewing.
A native of Oklahoma, I have lived, worked, and taught in New Orleans since 2005. My work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and my work is a part of the permanent collection of the New Orleans Museum of Art, as well as many private collections. I am a founding member of The Front, a gallery in New Orleans that is a cornerstone of the St Claude scene - the only completely artist-run gallery district in America.
