statement
My desire to explore the human experience via the metaphor of landscape led me to include figures within nature. I hope that the viewer reads these as metaphysical senses of place. The natural landscape serves as a backdrop to moments of human action, but the emotions conveyed tap into grand, universal themes.
I aim to make these events "feel" as real as possible through an attention to detail in hopes that they overwhelm the viewer. In an age where photographs are so readily available I lend importance to the image by the meditative act of rendering it in paint.
After conceiving an idea for a painting I undertake vigorous photo shoots and cull through dozens of reference photos before I start to paint. I look to my painting heroes and often borrow or adapt gestures, scenes, and compositions to have deep conversations with art history. I cast my models as archetypes and they often in some way have lived these roles. The paintings portray facets of the universal human condition such as loss, doubt, wisdom, and faith as to enlighten and remind viewers of their own humanity.
On reflection, I realize that these cinematic paintings depict people facing the most elemental conflict in nature—life and death—and they ask more questions than they answer.
bio
born: 1971, Milwaukee, Wisconsin
education
University of Cincinnati, MFA 1999
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, BFA 1995
selected awards/honors
Summerfair Aid to Individual Artists Grant, Cincinnati, Ohio, 2013,2009
Summer Fellowship, Northern Kentucky University, 2010
Al Smith Fellowship Award, Kentucky Arts Council, 2006
selected publications
Manifest International Painting Annual, 2014,2013, 2010
Get Real, Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville, Florida: Agility Press p.72-79
New American Paintings,Southern 2012,2008,2006
Stitches in Time on the Olympic Peninsula, 2009
selected solo or two-person exhibits
Into the Wild, Richard Demato Fine Arts, Sag Harbor, New York, 2013
Traces, Gross McCleaf Gallery, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2011
Places in Time, Heike Pickett Gallery, Versailles, Kentucky, 2010
selected group shows
GET REAL, MOCA Jacksonville, Jacksonville, Florida, 2014
Northern Kentucky at 506, 506 Ash Gallery, Erlanger, Kentucky 2014
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