This recent body of work focuses on the aftermath of both man made and natural disasters.  I have appropriated many of these photographic sources from Google image searches and taken images on location myself.  I archive, then digitally collage the photographs in preparation for the paintings.  I situate these images somewhere in between abstraction and representation in order to create a dialogue with modernist painting through postmodern practice.  I draw and paint these images not only to further slow them down, but to also support traditional notions of the "sublime landscape," one that is uncontrollably vast and frightening, within a contemporary context of anxiety and fear.  I am both drawn to these images and repelled by them.  They speak of a time where agenda setting, political rhetoric and consumption are perpetuated and often manufactured by the media.  As mass media sets the psychological and emotional tone for life as we know it, I work in an attempt to differentiate neurosis from my own understanding of reality.  

born:1980, Waukegan, IL

education:

Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, MFA, 2006
Western Illinois University, BFA, 2002

selected awards/honors

Honorable Mention, Visual Territories National Juried Exhibition Pittsburg State University, Pittsburg Kansas, 2011
2nd Place, Third Coast National, K Space Contemporary, Corpus Christi, TX 2009
1st Place, Jurors Choice, National Small Works Painting Exhibition ,Main Street Gallery 2006
Best in Show, National Small Works Exhibition, New York Art Collection 2004

selected publications

New American Paintings Western Edition No. 91 Open Studios Press, Boston Massachusets
INDA 5: 5th International Drawing Annual: Exhibition in Print, Manifest Creative Research Gallery, Cincinnati, Ohio Dec/Jan 2010/11 Manifest Press
New American Landscape, Sprocket Box Publishing, Chicago, Illinois, May 2010
New American Paintings Western Edition No. 84, Open Studios Press, Boston Massachusets

selected solo or two-person exhibits

Solo Exhibition, "Broken Balance," University of Wisconsin-Fondulac, Fondulac, WI
Things Fall Apart, Solo Exhibition, University of Texas-San Antonio Satellite Space Gallery, San Antonio, TX
Adrift; Paintings of Disaster Solo Exhibition, CSC Gallery, McLennan Community College, Waco, TX
Love Theatre, Solo Exhibition, Big Muddy Independent Media Center, Carbondale, IL

selected group shows

34th Annual Art on Paper National Juried Exhibition, Maryland Federation of Art, Circle Gallery, Annapolis MD
Americas 2011: Paper Works National Exhibition, Northwest Art Center, Minot State University, Minot, ND
Paper In Particular National Juried Exhibition, Columbia College, Columbia MO
"196 Exhibition," National Juried Exhibition, The Shore Institute for the Contemporary Arts, Long Branch, NJ