Statement

Inspired by the history of expressionism, I work to emphasize not what the image is, rather how the image was built, and the experience it lends to the viewer visually, and physically. My paintings all begin with the goal to take the materiality of oil painting to its extremes by laying textures upon each other that exist on opposite sides of the consistency spectrum. I control the viscosity of my paint by utilizing many types of painting mediums. Whether its Stand Oil, or Cold Wax, I guide the medium to settle into unique forms that are not easy to achieve with traditional painting methods.
Over time, I have become more interested in the process of a painting’s construction. I shifted my focus to studying the likes of contemporary painters, Jacqueline Humphries, Gerhard Richter, and Laura Owens. From learning the practices from those in the field of material painting, I found drive to push my work to the next level by making paintings that question the creation of the image, while restricting the medium to oil on canvas.
During the buildup of the textured layers, a history is created within the paintings that leads the audience to think about process and time within the same breath as subject and content. Working within the traditions of painting, abstraction has largely been saturated by expressions of mark, line, and color. I insert myself into the conversation by forcing the image into our space, either coming off the canvas physically, or by calling the possibilities of depth through the continuous layering of color without any discernible ground or space.