My paintings are an exploration of the spaces occupied by almost-formed narratives and the awkward uncertainties of in-betweens. Politics, people and nature all provide source imagery. The paintings, in oil on canvas, are created in fluid layers, with fragments of under painting showing through the finished surface, figures painted just enough to catch the essential gesture, character and movement. The backgrounds and foregrounds shift energetically as paint fields overlap at the edges of a form, resolving into a kind of illustrative expressionism. The approach maintains an economy of detail; stripes may be painted on the shirt of a small figure, but the features of the face left off. The goal is an awareness of something unresolved in both the paint surfaces and the scenarios they reflect, as if an animated storyline has been momentarily paused. The subjects are fragments of narratives, which describe situations we don’t quite know, can’t quite pin down, each a moment so specific as to be universal.
*NEWS
Special thanks to the Asheville Area Arts Council and North Carolina Arts Council for awarding me with a Regional Artist Project Grant this year.
• If you are in Asheville and would like to see my work please contact me for a studio visit. I now work out of the Phil Mechanic Building in the historic Riverside Arts District.
• Here is an online interview I did a few months ago for the blog, Art Resource
everything is as it should be
nothing is as it should be