Description:

ARTIST STATEMENT I fear the disconnect. Fast-paced western culture generates a separation between people and place. Daily actions are increasingly detached from the conscious mind. Weakened interpersonal relationships undermine the strength of communities. Life becomes a conveyor-belt of disengaged experience we passively flow through. These circumstances unsettle me as I nearly constantly consider the future. When I paint, the harrowing feelings subside. I am aware of the impact each of my gestures has on my evolving images. In beginning a new work, I initiate a thoughtful interaction. The inanimate materials I manipulate are given life as we engage in silent conversation. I arrange compositions in an exploration of relationships and use a wide range of colors, surfaces, and paint applications to work through my ideas with illustrative purpose. I emphasize connections by layering forms that vary in viscosity, tone, and hue. These forms touch and overlap, occasionally resting on top of each other. Sometimes I separate them as I question the oddity I find in the act of isolating the strikingly similar. I wonder why we choose to separate people and things that could be left in a collective state; we can simultaneously honor uniqueness and remain connected. I believe in the profound effect that relationships have on how an individual is shaped. In Interaction of Color Josef Albers explains that any one color is understood in relation to all other colors. This idea translates to humans as identities constantly fluctuate in response to an individual’s surrounding influences. We build our identity in comparing ourselves to parents, siblings, peers, heroes, and acquaintances. We exist not in isolation but within the world, inseparably. As we encounter artworks collectively, relationships form between individuals, their communities, and the world. Art’s purpose may serve a critical role in reminding us of the basic merit of human experience.