Statement

​Since my grandfather flew gliders, I spent summers during my childhood at airports. I watched as planes were towed into the sky then released to dance on air until they skated to the ground. As I drive to work along the highway, I am reminded of this place when I see the expansive sky above the asphalt. It feels as though I have been transported to this memory, yet the places also fold and ooze into each other metamorphosing. With painting, I investigate this compression of time, place, and memory.

Using traditional elements of landscape painting, I tie the work to a sense of place for the viewer to enter. Atmosphere and the effect of light aid in referencing specific times of day and season, like the hot haze of summer at noon or cool lavender, pink sunsets of winter. I invoke the sublime in nature to escape from the world. The current state of global affairs stifles the mind, and the sublime grounds in clarity so we can better understand ourselves. I push to open this internal dialogue.

A sense of reality is represented since the work is abstract. Color is easily identifiable such as traffic cone orange, or sunshine yellow accessing memory to recall specific moments or objects. This lets me build associations to place without being bogged down by the physical attributes, so the viewer conjures their own memories. Color samples are found from what is around me akin to choosing a crayon from a box. Found color permits a flow of fluid movements to experiment with what’s possible, rather than trying to focus on the stable process of color mixing. 

Time oscillates when making. Some pieces are born immediately while others take more time fermenting, and when I return to them my past self merges with my current consciousness. The dialogue between my two selves brings upon a stasis where I capture gestural moments. Recently, I’ve been thinking about time in relation to tempo and music. How could the work become more symphonic and still express the sublime?