An artist committed to locating the imaginative functions of abstraction within the conceptual focus of the Anthropocene, with painting, wall reliefs, overpainted photos, sculpture and video.
For art to be culturally valuable, it must be relational as opposed to demonstrative, inviting the viewer to participate in its explication, but it must also speak to something relevant at a time of accelerating change around the world. For me, nothing is as concerning as the climate emergency. I am committed to making art that locates the imaginative functions of abstraction within the conceptual focus of the Anthropocene. Across a range of disciplines including abstract painting, wall reliefs, overpainted photos, sculpture and video, I investigate how works of art can maintain themselves as such while addressing the serious issues of this human moment.
My recent work in a range of media invites the consideration of deep time through the geological lens as a vehicle for ideas of causation and consequence regarding the anthropogenic transformation of our landscapes in a rapidly changing climate.
These works regard what author and geologist, Marcia Bjornerud calls Timefulness, inviting an imaginative exploration of the time and space occupied by the human story in proportion to those far more vast parameters in which we are located. What is at stake is our awareness versus our obliviousness to the consequences of the human impact on our planet. As an art experience, I intend for the work I make to open the door to the viewer’s mind by asserting itself as an inviting but unusual object. It should, as its introduction, beg the question of its own existence.
In recent work, I’ve been employing a range of appropriated objects like rocks and hardware items, along with detritus from construction sites and machines, and combining them with materials like burlap and wire mesh to assemble a visual narrative anchored in what the combination of those materials signifies. Thereby, through a synthesis of these various signifiers, I abstractly depict anthropogenic alteration by combining natural and unnatural objects into a narrative. I work in a similar way in compiling moving images of pavement, rocks, water and other subjects with video. In painting, I become far more abstract and lean into visual metaphors for how the human story exists very much as the micro within an imposingly sublime macro, thereby alluding to our collective vulnerability and encouraging greater respect for our surroundings.