Artist’s Statement

I lived in London for a year recently – before going, a couple of painter friends and I mulled over what living abroad would “do” to my painting and maybe my sensibility as an artist.

What it seemed to do – which I didn’t expect – is confirm my identity firmly and squarely as an American, for better or worse. Just that, you know, this is where I’m from, and it has informed who I am probably more than I’m fully aware of.The things that earlier influenced my work and thought, i.e., Amish and Shaker things, seem now like just the most obvious manifestations of something in me that’s drawn particularly to the past of this place I live in.

The most recent past body of work was riffing on my thinking about mining, and underground fires, and uncontrollable things that go on around us that can be both terrifying and beautiful.

The current stuff is more or less a continuation of that – in these paintings I’m interested in seeing how rocks sort of talk with the painted surface they sit on, how a created thing (my painting) and a thing plucked from nature can interact with one another in a compelling way.