When making a painting, I employ only what I deem necessary. Due to this economy of material, the canvas, for example, has to do more than simply act as a surface to put an image on; it has to contribute to the image itself. To get the most out of these materials, I use them in a way that emphasizes what they are. If I am using paint, I want it to feel like paint. If I am using canvas, I want it to feel like canvas.

Liminality is soft. It is malleable, compliant, acquiescent, and supple. At its worst, it is impressionable, submissive, gullible, and feeble. At its best, it yields empathy and patience. I find strength in liminality—in vulnerability.

I think of my paintings as misfits—blemished characters that are either coming into being or left comically incomplete. I try to present the viewer with specific situations and relationships that playfully question the abstract world we live in. I am engrossed in the peculiar and the imperfect.

My work explores the relationship between physical spaces and the objects we fill them with. Often focusing on typical domestic decor and household ornaments, the work makes these inherently empty objects into simplified symbols that can then be rearranged and compressed to carry a formal sensibility. Currently, my work has concerned the idea of the painting as ornament, with the stock subjects of landscape, still life, and portraiture becoming knickknacks. I distill and consolidate these ideas, using a generic design vernacular to highlight both the

My recent series Metallic Leaf Garden explores the way individuals’ minds reshape their physical environment. Contemporary psychological theory allows that our consciousness, emotions, and subconscious can be akin to the “paint” that consistently colors our reality. My investigation incorporates a variety of individual psychological realms, depicting them in fictionalized surroundings that confuse the relationship between perception and reality. I utilize a mixture of expressionist/abstract aesthetics in a subtle, theatrical way to construct the characters’

I use the structures of role-play gaming and religious ritual to create allegorical drawings. Leveling up, isometric perspective, character creation, quest items, mythical beasts, and battles are used to mirror real-life scenarios where the individual butts up against institutional power structures. I contrast the reward system in gaming that is finely tuned to providing pleasure to the reward system of global capitalism that can at times feel arbitrary and cruel. My drawings are power simulations where I rule over a white rectangle.

Let’s think, for a moment, about romantic relationships (or painting). The most compelling aspect about having someone in your life, in my opinion, is that the other is available for you to travel upon—physically, emotionally, and intellectually. You’re allowed to touch everywhere, to inquire about everything. Permission is granted for you to go into all the rooms, all the cracks and nooks, all the dark corners.

That’s what a relationship (or painting) is—an invitation to explore another’s terrain.

My paintings examine subjects ranging from city life to facilities, maintenance and weather. Although these are essential elements, I’m more interested in how paintings can be made. My work is an open exploration of the subject through a mashup of self-imposed limitations in the way I use color, media, surface, and structure. My objective is not mastery of craft but rather activation of my subject through a changing relationship to the medium. A typical painting is a bricolage of working parts and improvised repairs. The studio is a laboratory