I make funny paintings about history: that is the simple way of putting it. Within that statement, three key words deserve much elaboration--"funny," "paintings," and "history;" and the word "I" cannot help but be present throughout. Working within and expanding upon the canon of history painting, I am interested in portraying the problem of historiography itself. History is an artificial construction that reflects actual events but can never fully convey its multiplicity and complexity.

My work reflects the contradictions in how we conceptualize landscape, wilderness, and nature. It underscores the tension and confusion surrounding our attempt to maintain a modern lifestyle while trying to live within the environment in a sustainable way.

It is my attempt to achieve a balance between the nonrepresentational and figurative elements of my work to blend into a lost and found situation that allows opportunity to discover for the viewer. I do not want my paintings to be entirely absorbed at initial read; I want them to be spent time with and new areas of interest to be continually found. Also I want the sections that reference real world to not be immediately apparent, to emerge upon study. So, as the surface is examined it becomes clear that certain sections of line work are in fact placeable forms.

The main concern in my work centers around objects and juxtapositions that have become ubiquitous in our daily landscapes. With the inundation of images and items designed to draw or divert our attention, everything from spectacular to the mundane to the neglected averages out to become considered normal, and therefore bypassed without a second thought. I bring these kinds of images to my studio to memory, where they are distilled and isolated into simple, heavy-handed drawings that function in fantasy, but reference reality.

The constructing of these paintings mirrors the construction of history, and furthermore the natural process of gathering and editing information in present society. I start with architectural interiors and marks that represent accumulated forms of information and memories. Once these marks are laid, there is a continuous reaction to the previous information. I use a combination of structure and an expressive vocabulary inherent to painting as elements to formally define space and express the intersections of a complicated society.

I show people in their specific, situational contexts. I strive to record and interpret the multiple layers of environmental and circumstantial factors that manifest in the individual, as well as the way one may view oneself. This reflects the schism in our culture, which on one hand holds people as they really are, and on the other reflects people as they would like to be, or the way the culture dictates they should be. This contrast of reality versus artifice is a signifier of contemporary culture.

In my paintings I focus on specific elements of a scene--a tree; houses; a lone skateboarder; an approaching shark--to create a shorthand sensation of an environment. My sources are personal photographs and found imagery that I synthesize through a mixture of rendered detail and reductive representational styles. I employ stylistic contrasts to add contemporary visual cues and surprises to more traditional subject matter. Combining distinct painting techniques is becoming increasingly interesting for me, much like a musician incorporating various instruments within a song.

Often I am not sure I believe in essences. They are characteristics I think to exist in things. Because of this they are also a type of ideal. Untouchable, formless, nameless, they remain inside something as a kind of distinction that separates one thing from another. Though I can tell things apart, I often doubt that I can find an essence. My ability to find them would preclude their very essential character. What I may be doing is admitting my location when I paint. I am here, I am there, but what I want to be is very close. The whole process of painting is a step towards something.

Three things motivate and shape my work: pure pleasure, challenge, and the engagement in a visual and critical dialogue with other painters, past and present. The pure pleasure I derive from painting is just that: complete and utter expressive gratification, akin to faith in its steadfastness. The challenge comes in many forms, particularly in not knowing exactly where a work is going to go.

I still consider myself a painter and find it difficult not to refer to these embroidered portraits as “paintings.” Although the medium employed is crewel embroidery wool, the technique borrows from the worlds of both drawing and painting.