Artist Statement
For me, art is about the process and connecting with something greater than myself. I find making my own paint and mixing up colors for hours extremely gratifying. It makes the connection between painting and artist much more of a symbiosis, which is important considering the spiritual and naturalistic quality that is at the core of my work. I find that my process is a confluence of the tangible and intangible, of presence and absence - about how they connect. The tangible being me, my medium, the painted surface, and the natural world. The intangible being my spirituality; the veils between this life, the one before, and the one after; all of those things I cannot express in words.
I make my paint and mix colors concurrently with making the initial marks on the painting. These marks are automatic and even chaotic. I react to those first experiences; bonds and relationships form between the textures and lines. I build up layers of these “memories” across the painted surface, obliterating and reiterating, interchanging between very wet and very dry paint and mediums. This process creates a history unique to each painting and yet connected to the whole of my purpose. I find this gives the work an emotional charge.
I have my own mythos and pathos, concepts and narratives that I keep mostly to myself, not wanting to rob the audience of their own experience when viewing the work. Suffice it to say, I am haunted by a variety of symbiotic relationships I have observed in and around my life. These relationships are manifested through certain textures and lines woven into my compositions.
The textual component frequently utilized as part of my visual language stems from my love of old documents, manuscripts, and even land deeds; I find them compositionally attractive. They express significance and importance even without getting up close enough to read them. There is an immediate sense of place, of history. So much knowledge built up over generations was required to craft them. I use textual components as a link between the tangible and the intangible: a legend on a map or a key that opens the door connecting two spaces, creating a covenant and an undertone of unspoken understanding between what I can manipulate physically and mentally. This grounds my experience to a foundation from which I can grasp the connections that govern so much of the world around me.
I invite my audience to listen for these subtle connections.