Artist Statement
In the last couple years Gravitational Waves have been detected, Homo naledi was added to the human species’ family tree, evidence suggesting water once flowed over Mars was discovered and new elements were added to the periodic table! While scores of new discoveries are made pertaining to global climate change, environmental protections are being systematically dismantled by our nationalistic leaders. Current events simultaneously seem like the futurism or dystopia of past generations. We feel at once pushed to react and pulled inward to reflect.
My current drawings and paintings embody the quest for narrative phenomena. Through my work I envision and enact moments of experimentation and discovery. The history of science informs the content of my recent work. The beginning of scientific discovery is inexorably linked to artistic practices through materials, tools and procedures. My painting practice using egg-tempera is a rigorous process that relates to the birth of scientific inquiry. Egg-tempera is a paint that is mixed each day from ground pigment and egg yolk based on historical recipes. My studio, a strewn-field of multi-colored powders, nature specimens, solutions and implements, often looks a bit like an alchemist’s laboratory. These connections are integral in my work and to the future of our culture as a whole.
My largely improvisational drawing practice provides a counter balance to the historical and material-driven qualities of my painting. Drawing is a way to generate ideas, stories, composition in a way that is fluid and open-ended. My drawing work is exploratory, often the subject presents itself through the process of drawing. Gestures, story-lines or patterns emerge expanding sometimes from an initial mark or shape, other times from text. These works on paper often are grouped together to make increasingly large-scale installations. While there is no singular narrative in an installation there are visual and thematic organizing logic.
Discovering, analyzing and understanding phenomena are practices that artists and scientists share, but differ in approach. The profoundly strange and wonderful ideas offered by quantum physics, alchemy and science-fiction find a visual adaptation in my work. Story-telling, pseudo-sciences and super-natural investigations are also very intriguing as wellsprings for narrative potential. The depictions in my paintings mix the factual and observed with the invented and personal.
This project is about curiosity; the area where art illuminates ideas and blurs the boundaries between science, philosophy, and human experience. How can quiet moments change how we view the future? What leads seekers to make discoveries? Will our hubris lead to our destruction as a species or into a new era of understanding? I am not interested in producing illustration. My aim is to be informed and inspired by my subject matter towards imagery that is rooted in narrative yet open to interpretation.
Through a combination of visual and narrative experiments I explore the nature of reality, history, gender and personal experience and hope to create images that are at once contemplative, captivating and anomalous.
In the last couple years Gravitational Waves have been detected, Homo naledi was added to the human species’ family tree, evidence suggesting water once flowed over Mars was discovered and new elements were added to the periodic table! While scores of new discoveries are made pertaining to global climate change, environmental protections are being systematically dismantled by our nationalistic leaders. Current events simultaneously seem like the futurism or dystopia of past generations. We feel at once pushed to react and pulled inward to reflect.
My current drawings and paintings embody the quest for narrative phenomena. Through my work I envision and enact moments of experimentation and discovery. The history of science informs the content of my recent work. The beginning of scientific discovery is inexorably linked to artistic practices through materials, tools and procedures. My painting practice using egg-tempera is a rigorous process that relates to the birth of scientific inquiry. Egg-tempera is a paint that is mixed each day from ground pigment and egg yolk based on historical recipes. My studio, a strewn-field of multi-colored powders, nature specimens, solutions and implements, often looks a bit like an alchemist’s laboratory. These connections are integral in my work and to the future of our culture as a whole.
My largely improvisational drawing practice provides a counter balance to the historical and material-driven qualities of my painting. Drawing is a way to generate ideas, stories, composition in a way that is fluid and open-ended. My drawing work is exploratory, often the subject presents itself through the process of drawing. Gestures, story-lines or patterns emerge expanding sometimes from an initial mark or shape, other times from text. These works on paper often are grouped together to make increasingly large-scale installations. While there is no singular narrative in an installation there are visual and thematic organizing logic.
Discovering, analyzing and understanding phenomena are practices that artists and scientists share, but differ in approach. The profoundly strange and wonderful ideas offered by quantum physics, alchemy and science-fiction find a visual adaptation in my work. Story-telling, pseudo-sciences and super-natural investigations are also very intriguing as wellsprings for narrative potential. The depictions in my paintings mix the factual and observed with the invented and personal.
This project is about curiosity; the area where art illuminates ideas and blurs the boundaries between science, philosophy, and human experience. How can quiet moments change how we view the future? What leads seekers to make discoveries? Will our hubris lead to our destruction as a species or into a new era of understanding? I am not interested in producing illustration. My aim is to be informed and inspired by my subject matter towards imagery that is rooted in narrative yet open to interpretation.
Through a combination of visual and narrative experiments I explore the nature of reality, history, gender and personal experience and hope to create images that are at once contemplative, captivating and anomalous.
