These large-scale paintings on canvas drop cloths incorporate ideas from magick and the occult, joined with considerations of how sexuality and desire may affect the creation of forms. Citing early twentieth-century occultist Austin Osman Spare’s system, I draw sigils—emblems encoding specific desires, to which magical power is imputed. The forms are painted roughly and quickly, usually with thinned-down acrylic and common paint rollers, indexing the body’s movement through space. Although the paintings are artifacts of personal rituals, I have begun

My work emphasizes the tactile quality of paint, the notion of paintings as a physical as well as pictorial experience. Through strategy and experimentation, I push and pull the work through a circuit of transformation. Striving for beauty and visceral pleasure, I subvert my intentions by setting up circumstances that will interfere with them. By occasionally taking my hand out of the equation, I allow the material to complete the circuit. While the work is founded on the fundamental tenets of formal painting—chromatics, substrate, composition, dimensionality,

My work has largely to do with events occurring in my life and their relationship to cultural issues that affect society. The work has a common narrative that many will understand, but at the same time it is personal. As I work, I look for an overarching experience that people can empathize with and relate to.

I explore balance through illusion and deception, creating relationships between image-based representation and tangible, sculptural objects. Often the perceptual and physical spaces of painting collide through my use of nontraditional materials and the interruption of the painted plane. Image becomes object and vice versa.

These paintings are from a series titled Blankets, and they operate within a broader theme I call Comfort Calamity, which depicts narratives that are carefree despite their claustrophobia. Keyed-up color reinforces a discombobulated and compressed illusionistic space loosely organized by a grid that suggests a picnic blanket, tile floor, life raft, tabletop, or window. By compressing the visual space depicted in each painting, I make all areas the subject, and all compete for attention. These factors establish narrative in the work.