Portion of Big Man on Campus, 2022

 
 

I make art about people and places that I am interested in and personally connected to.

My work addresses themes of memory, mortality, relationship, and the human condition. My process is an investigation of how to depict light. I am interested in how the human eye interprets color, and I employ color modulation in an attempt to manipulate how the viewer perceives my work.

Love of process drives my practice. I continually question what is more important: is it my relationship to my materials, or is it the subjects I’m painting?

My compositions are constructed to suggest themes and create narratives. I support my narratives through strategic placement of both subtle and obvious signifiers. I paint my figures and settings in a way that often feels like sculpting - portions of figures are built up out of dense slabs of paint. In some areas, I use clay tools to carve up my brushstrokes, and in other areas I leave their integrity intact. Sometimes I slather on marks in a more economical and urgent way to suggest what something is rather than fully articulating its every detail.

I am influenced by the impressionistic painting methods of Sedrick Huckaby, Lucian Freud, and John Singer Sargent. The work of Jenna Gribbon, Hope Gangloff, Liu Xiadong, and Alice Neel also give me continued inspiration. Josef Albers’s theories inform the way I handle color.