STATEMENT OF WORK

Adidas caps and LA Dodgers hats turned inside out and pressed against one another; pairs of sneakers tucked neatly, side-by-side. Stacked boxes of Pop Secret popcorn are torn open with the lids slightly agape. A lumpy yellow duffel bag is tied down but seems to burst at the seams. These staged arrangements become still lifes in the studio from where, at close range, the act of painting from observation happens. 

The point of departure is set within the expectations of a traditional still life. However, through the impossibilities of direct observation and concerns with scale and time, the subjects begin to act as a mimetic anchor to the process of recording what one sees. They recede and advance with sweeping gestures or obsessive detail, dissolve and materialize again, flirting with the notion of a stable pictorial system. 

There are erotic possibilities in the restraints of this daily painting practice, with its hyperbolic palette, focused subjects, and seriality.  Emerging from a repetition compulsion, where the highly prefabricated meets the handmade, questions about drives and desires thin the veil of the inner life, which is a complete construction of the outer life.  A back and forth process of working from direct observation results in the tension between perception and recognition, object and subject, in ways that make them appear paradoxical.