Artist Statement
In a time when traditional religion is on the decline, and the fastest growing spiritual group in our country are those that identify as “spiritual but not religious,” I am seeking to engage with existential inquiry through my creative practice. How can painting be a space of myth making for our current moment? What is the myth for our current moment? To start, I create paintings that map out a meaningful compass for my own life, or as I like to think of it, a personal cosmology. This cosmology, which is intricately tied to my experiences within landscape around me, points to the sense of awe, connection, and transcendence I feel within these places. For example, the desert mountains symbolize reaching upward toward the heavenly realm, and water features symbolize a passageway into the subconscious, and stormy skies represent the shadowy turmoil within. For nature is both a salve and amorally ominous. Our experience within it reflects to us that which is within us. My hope is that my paintings can reflect to the viewer, a drama that lives inside of them in a cathartic way. My aim is to point us toward the threads of our shadows so that we may start to unravel them and then transcend from that place.
The process
I work non-traditionally with paints, watering them down, adding solvents, alcohol and organic matter such as beet juice, green tea and earth pigments collected from my journeys in order to create unpredictable reactions and results. To add to this unpredictability, I often start from the back and see what seeps through to the other side. This initial process to mimics the geological forces in natural world such as wind, erosion and earthquakes. I often tap, bang on or shake my canvases. I like to break traditional rules and explore new possibilities with paint as a medium. This process creates an organic launching point that mirrors that which we do not have control over in life. Then, I have the choice of how to respond and build the world I want to live in (metaphorically and visually). This part of the process also creates a result that acts like scrying mirror where I can tap into my subconscious/ the ideas that live deep inside me.
In the next phase of the process, I visually listen to what I see and use my intuitive hand to build the world on the canvas. Sometimes, more symbolic forms arise and sometimes the painting remains totally abstract. I often teeter between these dual ways of working until I am happy with what I see. I ultimately aim to create a sense of visual depth like we might see in outer space, the deep ocean or a mountain vista, where one can sink/ rest in the painting and have a contemplative journey.
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