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my work really comes from a mapping of moments of hypersensitivity i experience; i think all people experience. i’m just really fascinated by these moments in time, sometimes momentous, usually not, in which everything just seems so crystal clear. these moments come in two formats for me – the freeze frame of something we see, and the freeze frame of something our senses record. our senses take over, and the conscious is almost more an observer of what the senses are recording. i call it the “texture of a moment”, and that’s the base source of my paintings.
take, for example, the movement of water. instead of painting a picture of ripples in the water, the painting becomes more of a dimensional exploration of the movement of the water, with the textural rise and fall, broken up into big drops distinct but liquid, cascading and merging with one another.
the other component is a reflection of our state of mind at that time; how the exterior is reflecting the interior.
in part, that is why i gravitate toward painting water. we live our lives measured in how many breaths we take; air is life and air becomes time. water is almost the anti-air. unbreathable, water becomes a suspension in time. between the two there is a horizon line, almost an event horizon. my paintings are mapping of that event horizon. we see the surface, the exterior we present to the world around us. but underneath we see what’s going on inside. the calm cool surface of placid water, but the huge bubble of air struggling to the surface as we’re drowning on the inside from our own inner turmoil.
the format itself becomes part of the statement.
my pieces are typically either square or long rectilinear. these shapes represent a flash in time, the breath of a moment, a suspension of our reality. we see life in these freeze frames, like a photograph, but these paintings are not that – they are a fraction, all encompassing, but so focused on a specific event. think of the long rectilinear as a tick on a timeline. sometimes, these passing moments aren’t moving quite at the same speed and i feel more accurate reflecting them more evenly. for example, heavy snow falling, blanketing the entire landscape. the longer the moment, the more square shape the piece takes on.