Artist’s Statement
My paintings come from a mixture of my own experiences, borrowed art historical footnotes, and imagery drawn from literary references. I want to allude to Patinir, Jacob von Ruisdael, Frederick Church, and Rilke with each meticulous brushstroke, but I want to diffuse these references through my own narrative, as well as my own hand and brush. The resulting images are (I hope) at once foreign and familiar, intimate yet overarching. I build my compositions from layers of thinly applied oil paint, starting with bold, random strokes of a dark color, like burnt umber; from these haphazard marks, I start to unearth an image. One ragged stroke becomes the beginning of a tree; another drag of the brush might eventually be the beginning of a river or rock. I begin with abstract gestures and textures and find my way to a composition. As a result, these works have a searching quality—the desire to peer, forage, and unearth is implicit in the process of making the painting itself. This method of locating structure creates a subterfuge in the center of my paintings; with a clump of leafy tendrils here, or an expanse of negative space there, I try to create a sense that these paintings have found their own way to the center of the picture plane.
