I am a process man. I find that all new work builds upon the work that came before. Through the use of strokes, scrapes and dots, I pull images of vibrant color and movement out of the black void of my canvases.  But before any brush touches canvas, I have sketched copiously and journaled about my motivation for each piece.  All my canvases start with black grounded gesso. I like that the grounds in this gesso pull the color off the brush, aiding in my impasto style of painting.

A wash-like foundation of opaque color then sets the emotion of the painting. My work tends to vacillate between aggressive and gestural or shimmering and delicate. Through this choice of emotion, my paintings can be described as “alive with color, curve and form, the elements seemingly one moment away from running riot over the canvas – and perhaps not stopping there “ (Steve Brisendine, “Chaos, Carefully Controlled “, artkc365,  May 7, 2009) to an “almost ethereal experience [with] subtle color variation that gives the canvas a hazy, airy feel.” (Adam Crowley, “Epic Swirls, Controlled Energy”, ereview,  March 23, 2010).

All of my work reflects my deep love of the natural world. I am constantly exploring the gap between humans and nature, the ways in which we have become disconnected from the living planet. My abstract shapes and gestures reflect how we mimic nature even in a digital age. Huge waves rise and break across the canvas like the constant barrage of media that we are flooded with daily. We ignore the state of our planet’s oceans yet these digital swells, we are unwilling to ignore. The structure of blocks, built upon each other, echo our tight, overpopulated cities but also the structured, organized cells of a leaf. My work is often a response to events of destruction we commit on our planet; thick bands of oil move across a pristine sea of blue and fire leaps to the sky in columns of red heat. Other paintings honor my experiences when I am present on the planet and aware of its beauty; the swirling pastel sky before rain or the swift waterfall tumbling to the rocks below.

As a gutai painter, I allow the act of creating my art to be equally important as the final piece. Sometimes the painting exists merely as the receipt that an artistic event took place. Through my wild scrapes and tight strokes, I am able to transfer my emotions, leaving the canvas to contain the experience, and allowing me to find peace.

I ascribe to the ethics of the New York School painters, believing that all good work comes through hard work. I believe that my work is important, that I am painting for my place in museums, my place in history. I’m descended from farmers and ranchers and I follow my father’s motto;  “Anything that ever really mattered, wasn’t easy to do.”