Artist Statements

I am an artist who makes quiet paintings and drawings that mark my observations of how the built and unbuilt worlds interact. I seek to understand how specific ecosystems develop and function, and I am an artist who sees how late capitalism obscures class politics by emphasizing racial categories. I observe the world, and my artistic record is my response. (December 2022)

 

Practiced observation allows me to find what is unseen and always present.
This is true for what exists in our world and what lies on my canvas. (October 2022)

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I see a decaying world, and a dilemma presents.

I want to respond with peaceful creatures in imagined and idyllic worlds even as I am compelled to see and respond to the world as it is.

Depravity fosters romance, and depravity fosters politics, too. (September 2020)

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ABOLISH WHITENESS NOW. (June 2020)

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Farmland fills that space, almost “naturally”, between the village and the woods. Here, too, on these geometric fields, cats and dogs run about, chase after, and consort with hedgehogs, deer, and all creatures untamed. (June 2018)

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Above Lac Léman, I squint but fail to see through the layers of clouds. With eyes open, I wait. When the sun shines and the winds blow, I know these cloudy forms will give way to Mont Blanc’s icy peak. (August 2017)

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When the world I see diverges from the world I imagine, my practice moves from observation to invention. (February 2016)

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My observations of the natural world give way to representations, inventions, and perversions. (December 2014)

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There is a line, even if unmarked, between natural and unnatural, between built and un-built, between world and earth; and I revel where this line erupts.

Lava turns to stone that lines a Chicago garden. (October 2013)

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Owlets cry for food, coyote sirens warn, and frog songs lull me to sleep. A nest of newts is red and sanguine, and a lone mushroom portends the angel of death. I hear a tree fall in the distance.

Eyes open, ears alert, and the forest marks me. (August 2012)

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Where language fails, art reigns. (April 2012)

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Hokusai envisioned thirty-six views of Mount Fuji, and Cezanne gazed at Mont Sainte-Victoire with fresh energy over sixty times. I, too, am looking for my earthly motif that ranges into the heavens.

I am dreaming of white mountains cast in numberless shades of summer green. (July 2011)

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Chinese orthography and primitive art-forms bewitch, and I am drawing towards all that is child-like, animal-like, and angelic. (July 2010)

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I sense an artistic responsibility to grasp, process, and re-present our world. This is also my privilege. (February 2008)

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I paint quietly and slowly. (June 2006)

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My paintings and drawings record direct and repeated observations. Each reiteration of similar motifs marks an increasing intimacy with the world and moves an observational practice closer to a private meditation. My comfort in familiar objects and their spaces manifests in an aging collection of citrus fruit—once-fresh oranges are now desiccated, discolored, misshapen, and hard to the touch; and my desire to escape the mundane impels me toward the uncanny. (May 2006)