My work parallels our ideas of rarity between the evolution of species, the creation of art, and the advancement of technology. Within the context of an ongoing Holocene mass extinction, I examine the meaning of these values through a “symbology” informed by natural history, digital media, and field experience in nature. As a boy in rural Ohio I observed species that have since become scarce. Now I want to understand how the precipitous decline of biodiversity will affect humanity in the future, and what role painting can play in the discourse.

I am interested in the relationship between decoration and function, and, similarly, how painting operates as both an object and an idea. Simple compositions depicting singular moments, things, and situations in shallow pictorial space allow me to explore my interests in formalism, geometry, and abstraction with the most freedom. By imposing such parameters, I am better able to investigate issues regarding the surface of the work and the materiality of paint, often experimenting with media more closely associated with the decorative arts, like glitter, gold leaf,

My recent work revolves around the awkward, disconnected, fleeting, and loving relationships that exist between the natural world and oneself. I investigate these relationships largely through two gestures: the act of carving and the act of framing. Carving as an attempt to physically imprint something human onto a natural object. Framing as an attempt to selectively identify an illusion or image while signifying its importance (and at the same time removing the viewer from the identified image).

In my work, I create narratives using references from personal and popular resources. I am endlessly fascinated by human interactions. I explore the comfort found in ritual and group thinking. My characters wait patiently together, groom each other, and task towards small, strange goals. I focus on the nuances of expressions and gestures and their meanings, both implicit and vague.

Until the lions have their own scribes, history will always glorify the hunter.
—African proverb Often it seems that truth in contemporary society and history is the message that is repeated at the highest volume and with the greatest frequency. Because of their enhanced privilege and superior authority, those with status control the definition of expected social identity, as they have the greatest influence and control over the volume, frequency and availability of information.

My quixotic mission is to make sense of pandemonium. Each image conveys a search for connections that organize visual chaos into an understandable form. Confusion and inconsistency inevitably result from efforts to order and objectify the theoretical. The seductive appeal of making sense of things, however, is a fundamental human desire. We obsessively create structures for compartmentalizing the world and guiding our interaction with it. The true pleasure of such constructs lies not in infallible logic, but in reveling in their contradictions and idiosyncrasies.

In my mixed media drawings, I contemplate the boundary between natural and synthetic states. In a world where representative icons of the non-synthesized world (wood, stone, greenery, water) are continually subjugated by those of the synthesized world (concrete, steel, glass, chemicals), nature comes at an increasingly greater premium. Because of our innate need to feel ourselves connect to nature, we look to the synthesized world to represent it.

I create a level playing field for abstraction and reference, a territory where both can harmonize and spar. Simply put, this is how I reflect the world in which we live. Notions of order and chaos, beauty, tenderness and violence, calm and anxiety all come together through mark-making, surface, and color. This lifelong journey to create paintings with a pulse keeps me honest.

In my current work, I attempt to reinterpret the landscape painting by combining formal abstraction with graphic aesthetics. The balance between control and spontaneity, as well as the formal and casual application of paint is something that I want to explore. The basic framework allows color and color fields trap the gestural strokes, harnessing the amount of energy that is released upon the canvas. I am continually interested in the attention that is created between the painted organic forms and color contrast with the cut vinyl and drawing.

My recent works-on-paper are created using out-of-date, somewhat tattered road maps from my car’s glove compartment. By the time I finish with them they are significantly altered. On some maps, the roads become rivers or are clogged with flowering vines. In others, coastlines are flooded and inland seas are rehydrated. In my most recent series, entitled Sprawl, fungi and other rapidly multiplying species like yeast, war against urban expansion. In all of the work, erosion, water, overgrown plant life, and fungi have replaced humanity as the determining force of land.