An artist reception will be held on May 22nd from 6-8pm.
I value the practice of painting as a way to explore both inside and outside — of myself, my work, and my surroundings. During the time a painting is “open” and developing, it serves as a container and reflector for whatever’s happening in life, whatever I bring into the studio with me. Those internal questions get discussed and explored in the choices I make and the covering or exposing of prior moves. My paintings start without a plan, and usually progress something like building a bridge while crossing it. Formally, I’m inspired by sources in the built environment: interior and exterior space, mundane objects, bright colors, hard edges and sharp shadows, street architecture and road markings, and weathered commercial signage — things made to serve a purpose, then left to age and change and often be totally overlooked.
I’m fascinated by the way paint layers can hold time, conceal and reveal history, and serve as a form of material memory. In the physical world, time and use will wear down textures and alter colors in unintended ways, a process that I’ve adopted for my work by incorporating complete teardowns of my surfaces when needed. Taking scrapers and scrubbers to the face of a painting with several weeks’ work invested in it never gets easier, but it does leave a beautiful, charged field of unpredictable events, restoring potential energy and changing my direction. It’s all come apart... now anything is possible again.
That’s what really hooks me about painting: the uncertainty and the possibility. I’ve never liked making pictures of things that can readily be named, or leaving the whole story on the face of a painting. Not-knowing leaves room. Not immediately finding a purpose or a reason invites questions, and finding answers is a very alive and present thing to do. A very human thing. My experience of the world is shaped largely by my curiosity — call it an inverse certainty — and I want to look at what’s around and inside me without deciding in advance. I hope to leave the work open for others to explore, according to curiosities of their own.