I am a Davis-grown painter currently living in Sacramento. Oil painting and sculpture are my true loves, but I’m also a graphic designer, muralist and tattooer. I’m a loving partner and friend, an adventurous outdoorsman and an ardent birdwatcher. In 28 years my passion for art has remained paramount and unwavering. I grew up drawing and painting animals and people constantly. Nature will always make its way into my work but my focus is the figure and the stories a figure can tell.
I’m interested in the narrative that expands out from a chosen instant. How can a painting or sculpture of just one moment in time imply an entire story? How much should be explicitly stated, and what should be left up to the viewer’s imagination? Humans understand the language of the face, the language of the body, before they understand speech. It is the universal means of communication and I’m working hard to be fluent. For years I practiced realistic, representational painting from life or photo reference. And although learning from life will be an eternal practice, I’ve got a firm enough grip on anatomy and light and shadow, that I’ve been deconstructing and exaggerating the figure to create compositions which lean more and more abstract. And most recently, that journey into the abstract has also walked me off the canvas and into the woodshop.
My latest works are sculptures made from layering finely cut wooden shapes. Each piece is sanded, painted and assembled into figures and their surroundings. I’m inventing the method as I go and refining it with each piece. There’s boundless freedom outside the rectangle of the canvas and the textures of the wood give these pieces a very real tactility. It’s so exciting to be at the beginning of something new. My goals now are to push scale and complexity.
My biggest influences include Alberto Giacometti, ARYZ, Anna Park, Colleen Barry, Sainer ETAM, and Bill Watterson but that list changes often.
It’s just after sunset and as I stroll, sweeping headlights reveal the secrets kept safe in the shadows ignored by the yellow street lamps. There’s a front porch conversation to my right, and a possum in a dumpster to my left. Someone shouts in the distance. The light reflected on the belly of the clouds is a sign of the city’s life. I wonder if I am the the animal and this is my habitat, or if the whole city, with its asphalt arteries, brick and mortar organs and electrical wire nervous system, is the beast, and I’m just a red blood cell circulating oxygen. Either way this town has a pulse.
Run a finger through the cobwebs in the corner.
Wink at the raccoon in the storm drain.
Press your cheek hard against the dirt.
Feel the ants and broken glass bite.
Gnaw the black gum off the cement.
Maybe there’s some flavor left in it.
Throw a jab, pick a scab, lick your wounds and never ever go to sleep.
