About the Artist
My most recent work is a collection of paintings that explore the body as a representational problem. The work shifted from painting figures in landscape to focusing on the individual figure during the pandemic lockdown, filling my studio space with painted bodies to replace the physical bodies that had been in his life. What started as loss became a process of reimagining and rethinking the body, working through what a figure can be or how a body can be represented. Bodies are frozen, permanently suspended, and perpetually in the process of escaping their state of sensation and stimulation.
The abstraction and distortions within the work act on our senses (as viewers) but could easily read as nonsense. The paintings are also a recording of a material process. Using both intuition and reflex, I gesturally apply brush strokes until the figure emerges. The canvas edges act as boundaries for the painted subject as well as a boundary for brush strokes. Figures fill the canvas, joining the represented subject and the material object closer together. The pictorial space is determinant of the physical space. This is further explored through the flattening and overlap of background information onto the foreground. The works are records of bodily speed and exuberance made visible through the suspended motion of line and form. Bodies are filled with the energy of competing parts, coming into being in front of the viewer’s vary eyes. I am a practicing painter that works with themes of the body. I moved to San Diego from New York City and transitioned from doing tattoo art to focusing on painting. In San Diego, I have been deeply inspired by the vast biodiversity and scenery. I have participated in artist residencies at Arts Letters and Numbers and Signal Fire, where I examined the body (specifically mine) in a variety of landscapes, while making paintings, performance and social practice. I am primarily a painter but enjoy an interdisciplinary approach to painting. |