Robert Frost once said “The best way out is always through.” My artistic process is a series of attempts to inhabit difficult situations and move through them: the more solutions I can find artistically, the more gracefully and imaginatively I can move in the real world. By bringing internal barriers into the physical landscape, I am able to view them in the earnest light of day and find ways to glide over, through and within them. When I present the inhabitants of my paintings with the fantastic world of the non-literal-made-tangible, they gain the freedom to create hundreds of ways through obstacles. Where there are untried solutions, there is always hope. My work is about the learning process that sustains that hope.
I love the tactile nature of oil painting and traditional printmaking techniques. These patient, slow, process-driven practices allow my ideas to grow and evolve from the first sketch until the final stroke. Change is inevitable in my practice, fueled largely by chance. My most intricately planned woodcuts must accept and adapt to every slip of the knife. A touch too much Alizarin Crimson in an underpainting can transform the atmosphere of a piece from heavy to optimistic. I accept and embrace these influences.
Writing is also a pivotal part of my practice. Every piece begins with a question, followed by six pages of hungry cursive scrawling which eventually evolve into an image. I conduct extensive research to pinpoint the correct lighting, texture, anatomy and scale of every element of my drawing. My sketchbooks are filled with these internal dialogues.
I make art because I need to know what life really looks like once all of its veils are cast away. I yearn to see its bare-faced beauty. My paintings exist in a world stripped of its façade until only the internal landscape remains. By charting the topography of this honest new land, I can learn how to move through my own world with unfettered steps.