I create intricate, imagined environments made entirely from the clustered fragments of deconstructed paintings. Each piece begins as a flat painting on panel. I consider these flat paintings sites for exploration. Excavating their surfaces, I compress the warm, pigmented wax into forms that resemble weird fossils, geodes, bones and shards. I collect and individualize these elements in order to reassemble them into high-relief pieces that erupt from the wall.
Pushing the boundaries of sculpture and painting in this way makes me think
about plate tectonics, where landmasses are continually drifting apart and
crashing together, layering one episode on top of another in
precarious ways.
Geologists know that rocks can tell stories if you know how to read them; I take
a similar approach to painting, playfully comparing human and geologic time.
Like an archaeologist, my process exposes what is hidden beneath the surface.
Folded, crumpled and faulted; these paintings are signatures of the events that
formed them. Using the process of making as a tool for experimentation, I
consider the pure medium fodder for a playfully conceptual attempt to put the
Art back into the Arts & Sciences.