Statement

I was the fifth and final generation in my family to tend the land of our small Vermont farm. It is difficult to express the heaviness I felt when the realtor called to say I had lost over 100 years of intergenerational knowledge to someone else’s cash offer.

Defined by the psychic charge of rural space, my 25 years of farming immersed me into the supernatural, where nonverbal communication with our animals came intuitively and strange encounters with wild animals were commonplace. Walking the land, I was never truly alone; the physical proximity of my ancestors’ final resting places turned the air heavy with their residual energy. Through the land, all generations felt alive simultaneously.

I use my oil paintings to replicate the seasons and rhythm of farming, working with the belief that consciousness is inherent to all things. Each painting begins with stretched linen, where I use the same mallet that I once used to drive fence posts when rotating sheep through their pastures. Inspired by surrealists such as Frida Kahlo and Leonora Carrington, my paintings use animals, trees, flowers, and the sun to serve as mirrors, reflecting our inner worlds back at us through layers of emotional and symbolic significance. Like farming, my work is also rooted in tradition, with techniques informed by master painters such as John Singer Sargent and Diego Velázquez.

Now surrounded by the urban environment of New York City, canvas and paint replace soil and seed as the substrates through which I pass on my inherited knowledge of land stewardship.