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, mass-produced nature and science book sets, reference books, and textbooks. As a young person I devoured these materials, looking for answers and representations; the images contained were burned in my memory. Upon these images, I have now projected my own sense of nostalgia, and also a kind of false recollection based on copied and borrowed memories that are rooted in these found pictures. Because of the imagery contained in them, these paintings can entertain references to the Romantic concepts of Nature and the Sublime, though due to their origins they are mediated, contemporary versions that reflect our shared experience/non-experience.
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 history and language of painting is ever-present in my mind, and it leaves its mark on the works. 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 kind of 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 also a founding member of The Front, an artist-run gallery in New Orleans that is a cornerstone of the only completely artist-run gallery district in America.
My style hovers between representation and abstraction, and most of my imagery comes from dated, mass-produced nature and science book sets, reference books, and textbooks. As a young person I devoured these materials, looking for answers and representations; the images contained were burned in my memory. Upon these images, I have now projected my own sense of nostalgia, and also a kind of false recollection based on copied and borrowed memories that are rooted in these found pictures. Because of the imagery contained in them, these paintings can entertain references to the Romantic concepts of Nature and the Sublime, though due to their origins they are mediated, contemporary versions that reflect our shared experience/non-experience.
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 history and language of painting is ever-present in my mind, and it leaves its mark on the works. 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 kind of 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 also a founding member of The Front, an artist-run gallery in New Orleans that is a cornerstone of the only completely artist-run gallery district in America.
