Statement

Southern California is home to a luminous visual field, a vast and expansive landscape defined by its oceans, deserts and mountain skies. As a painter I aim to capture these aesthetic sensations in an original way, as the inventor of an imaginary landscape within each work. My paintings reflect a visual fascination with the undulating light and color within atmospheric space. Painting provides a powerful tool to examine these gradations, study the subtle transitions and translucent effects.  

My studio practice explores the physical properties and visual potential of both the paint and the surface. As a classically trained artist, the history of oil painting is important to me. Referencing the past has helped develop a robust and eloquent visual language, but expanding on that language through experimentation leads one closer to truly original work. By stripping the subject of its representational identity and revealing only the formal elements I hope to create a purely visceral sensation, detached from cognitive recognition and simple identification. In our culture, we receive and process images at an accelerated rate and to create a picture that slows that pace, relieves the mind, and achieves aesthetic sensation is a guiding principle of my practice.