Artist/Thesis Statement
My studio practice has everything to do with looking and noticing. I do not seek these places out as subjects for paintings, but I encounter them in my everyday life, and I recognize the quiet admiration that emerges through careful attention. Time is illusive in the way that it changes our perceptions, the way that it transforms light and recontextualizes spaces. My work has to do with an idea of extracting these ephemeral or liminal moments that become the roots for a painting; paintings that become permanent, and inhabit physically felt space. Additionally, by constructing distinct panels I get to legitimize the boundaries of the image. Not only do they now stand as these concrete and tangible occurrences, but they’re also suggestive of activity that takes place beyond themselves. The viewer starts to formulate questions about where the light in the painting originates from? and how do these forms exist? and where?
My work has much to do with taking the mundane and the wearisome and creating a sense of placidity. The paintings are meant to accentuate subtle little moments; like the way a certain shadow is cast, the angle of a rooftop, or the way that a white house becomes purple or yellow with passages of light and shadow. This in turn places emphasis on the way the viewer experiences it, and so in my work I stress the importance of scale by making ‘life-size’ paintings, addressing the physical relationship that exists between the substrate and the spectator. I want these paintings to be an event in which the viewer is involved, not only in their contemplation of them, but even in their own lives when they start to notice these moments for themselves.
Comfort is nearly a plague; when we get too comfortable we stop seeing the world thoughtfully, there’s a sensitivity that is lost when we’re exposed to the same environments for too long. I choose to use everyday places as the subject of my paintings in the hopes that a viewer may be provided a moment to stop, stare, and appreciate what’s been presented so that they can learn to revere the details of their own lives. Everything in life is worth painting — my work speaks to a need to be present, to pay more attention to the smaller moments in our busy lives.
