Animal Kingdom
Solo Exhibition, Abend Gallery 2023
The title for this exhibition, Animal Kingdom, is both a reference to the taxonomic term kingdom and an allusion to a fantasy scenario where animals have taken over the world. Each work has a unique approach to presenting this world. I began to wonder, what would an elegant portrait of a bear or a lemur look like? Or, given the chance, what might a buffalo do in an art museum when confronted with a painting like American Progress that glorifies its extermination? In a sense, these works are all examples of revisionist history because they take historical human centric visual narratives and replace them with animal protagonists.
I gained inspiration for this work both from my own deep love of animals, and from my observations of our changing planet. For many years of my life, I have been some form of vegetarian or vegan. These paintings ask viewers to look at animals with a sense of dignity and respect. Several of the paintings in this series follow traditions of conventional portraiture as a tool to elevate animals. They also demonstrate a sense of anger and frustration in animals. This can be seen in paintings that show animals walking over famous sculptures or destroying iconic artworks. I also enjoyed playing with humorous and absurd narratives in these works. Though this work has a fantastical element to it, real life examples abound. We all watched with wonder and fascination how quickly nature wanted to take back spaces from us during the Covid-19 lockdown. And, as I write this statement, orcas are attacking yachts in Spain, an elk punched a hole in the tire of an obnoxious tourist in Yellowstone, and an infamous otter is stealing surf boards to catch its own waves in Santa Cruz.
I walk in the footsteps of other artists working to reimagine the role of animals. One of my favorite 19th century artists is Rosa Bonheur, who gained unprecedented fame for her accurate and powerful paintings of animals. My former graduate school mentor and advisor Peter Zokosky has a fascinating series of chimpanzee portraits, fellow Colorado artist Mai Wyn routinely describes the intentional dignity and regality she seeks in her animal portraits, and the contemporary painter Martin Wittfooth creates moving portraits of animals caught up in postapocalyptic nightmares. Each of these artists has inspired me in one way or another. I wanted to add to this ongoing conversation with my own observations. I attempted to push the notion of a regal animal portrait and ponder the visual possibilities of animals taking over prestigious palaces, galleries, and museums. In our society, we have been so afraid of anthropomorphizing animals that we have over corrected. We often fail to see animals as equally emotional and sentient beings. My hope is that viewers walk away from this exhibition thinking just a little differently about how we should regard our fellow creatures on this planet.
Dreams from the Anthropocene
Solo Exhibition, Abend Gallery 2022
We now live in a new geological epoch known as the “Anthropocene.” This period refers to the significant human impact on species extinction and the climate since 1950. I chose to integrate imagery from 17th century Dutch still life paintings because this genre developed in tandem with trade, colonialism, market capitalism, and consumption. These traditional paintings displayed both local and global riches in the form of food items, Chinese porcelain, Persian carpets, and even citrus fruits imported from the Mediterranean. During the height of the “Tulip Mania” in the Netherlands, a tulip market bubble fueled by frenzied purchases of rare bulbs, some tulips cost the same amount as a home. By working within and against these traditional methods, I call these historical foundations into question and ask viewers to look at art history in a new light. Juxtaposing icebergs with imagery from traditional Dutch paintings also asks us to examine how the historical relationship between humans and the environment has generated a legacy of a warming planet.
My work also responds to the surrealist tradition. The surrealist movement offered a deep critique of the nature of reality and the relationship between our dreaming and waking states. Surrealists combined Freudian theories of the subconscious with the post WWI Dadaist rejection of rationality to generate a new take on reality. Many surrealist artists randomly combined cutout pictures to create unusual dream-like collages. They would also play with distortions in scale and perspective. Like the surrealist artists that came before my time, I also enjoy manipulating scale to create a sense of unreality and distortion. However, rather than seeking out random free association like the surrealists, I am intentionally combining images to generate a critical dialogue around climate change. By using dream like surrealist collage to comment on climate change, these images generate dreams from the Anthropocene for viewers to contemplate. I believe art provides a valuable platform for processing the existential threat of climate change that can be both healing and transformative in its call to action.
East & West
Scope Miami Art Fair, 2021
This body of work combines visual elements from Eastern and Western painting traditions with the aim of questioning the artificial divisions between the two cultures. During the Covid-19 pandemic, we have seen a troubling increase in xenophobia against the East. Rather than divide two cultures, my paintings ask what beauty can arise from blending the two worlds? The larger works in this series combine the rich history of Chinese landscape painting with the luxurious flowers from Dutch Still Life painting. These traditions harken back to a pre-industrial moment when the east and west stood on near equal footing. We now sit in a post-industrial moment where the west suffers deep anxiety at the ever increasing economic prowess of the east. The smaller paintings also combine Eastern and Western visual traditions by portraying animals painted in traditional Western academic realism with expressive marks and elements that allude to the gestural nature of the ink brush painting traditions in China and Japan.
These paintings reference the long history of interconnected artistic practices between Eastern and Western cultures. In the west, we assume that we discovered modern art, yet many Chinese and Japanese artists discovered “modern” painterly techniques much earlier. Scholars argue that Chinese painters reached such realistic painterly competency by the 1100’s, that their literati painters explored a version of modern abstraction, including expressionism and pointillism, nearly a millennium before European modernism emerged in the late 19th and early 20th century. The west also owes early forms of modern art, including Impressionism, to the influence of Japanese aesthetics. Monet, Van Gogh, and Cassatt would not be the artists we know and love today without the lessons they learned from Japanese artists. Even the iconic tulip from Dutch still life paintings originated in central Asia. And, a wave of Chinese artists studied in Europe in the early 20th century and returned home bringing both 19th century academic traditions and Western modernist traditions that heavily influenced Chinese art academies throughout the 20th century. As much as we want to pretend that our cultures are distinct, when we begin to unfold layers we see the interconnected nature of a global visual culture. My work wants to pull all of this to the surface and make this connection explicit. I seek to celebrate the beauty of visual interrelation and interdependence.
Reimagining the Sublime
Solo Exhibition, Abend Gallery 2021
This body of work represents a concept called “The feminine sublime.” I discovered this idea while reading an interesting article by the contemporary painter Constance Mallinson. She argues that in traditional landscape paintings the sublime refers to a masculine conception of our relationship to nature. Sublime paintings by landscape artists like Casper David Friedrich show the heroic masculine ability to dominate and control nature. In contrast to this concept, the feminine sublime considers how our relationship to nature is ever evolving, uncertain, and chaotic. When I read Mallinson’s article, I recognized the feminine sublime in my own paintings and decided to focus on this concept even further for this exhibition. Each painting represents the uncertainty and chaos inherent in our connection with the environment. Oversized flowers take over natural environments, or swirl together within abstract shapes. Some paintings are realistic, yet surreal in their juxtapositions. Others provide combinations of abstract and realistic renderings to avoid any sense of resolution and to heighten the feelings of change and dynamism.
My work draws formal elements from both traditional movements like Dutch Still Life painting and contemporary movements like the Leipzig school. By incorporating traditional and contemporary painterly elements, the paintings allude to the fact that our complicated relationship with the environment has been an historical and contemporary issue. My work provides a platform for conversations about how we connect to our natural surroundings. None of these paintings provide clear solutions or answers to our predicament. Rather, they allow us to sit with that feeling of uncertainty about our collective future. I believe art provides a valuable avenue for processing these existential threats that can be both healing and transformative.
Rewilding
Solo Exhibition, Abend Gallery 2021
Many of these paintings combine elements of traditional American landscape and Dutch Still Lifes. The title of this show is inspired by a term I learned while reading a fascinating climate change novel titled The Ministry of the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. It refers to reclaiming territory for the natural world. You will also note that a number of the paintings have corresponding song titles that align with the imagery. For example, the painting above is titled Sonata Duodecima to reflect its Baroque imagery and emotional quality. I encourage listening to these songs while viewing the paintings.
Hybrids
Solo Exhibition, Pirate Gallery 2018
The conceptual framework for this series of paintings began during the intense political, social, and environmental climate of 2016. These paintings explore the destabilized and uncertain reality of our times by combining disjointed images and painterly vocabularies. They often include animals as subjects in ambiguous and morphing environments. The combination of animal imagery with abstract shapes and unusual colors alludes to the often problematic relationship that forms between natural and constructed worlds. These artworks are simultaneously playful in execution and unsettling in their implications.
On a formal level, these paintings explore the arbitrary divisions between representation and abstraction. A single work may include various degrees of resolution and construction of illusionistic space. Crude drawings stand adjacent to polished and rendered imagery, creating a jarring and even theatrical quality. I derive inspiration from both traditional painting and contemporary artists who push the capabilities of the medium. These artists include Ruprecht Von Kaufmann, Julie Heffernan, Angela Fraleigh, Matthias Weischer, David Schnell, and Sangram Majumdar. I strive to build formal and conceptual juxtapositions that will develop into new possibilities for interpretation and reflection.