STATEMENT OF WORK

     My work reflects the spiritual, immaterial substance of the human condition as it’s evolved throughout history. By establishing nonlinear, narrative scenes, each painting I realize is effectively reincarnated with each revisiting. I create these unstable presentations because they feel most true; they foreground uncertainty as an anchoring reality, and quietly allude to my surrealist tendencies. When I’m drafting these large-scale fictional scenes, my mind is clear and shapes surface without decision. From there, gestures and expressions emerge and dictate next steps, both for myself and for the painting’s narrative arc. This automatic process is what I call Unseen Forces, which is not only my subconscious at work, but my conscious adaptation of Wimmelbilderbuch—of the hidden picture book (think Pieter Bruegel; Hieronymous Bosch), in my own context.

     I consider my paintings to be a source text meant for deciphering. Foundational to this text, and my practice, is character development. Using ink and gouache, dip pens and brushes, I render lines and vibrant color, revealing my love of manga and affinity for comic masters like Hokusai. While I believe my work most loudly recognizes its Asian influence, I also lean heavily on the artists of the Northern European Renaissance, like Heironymous Bosch, for the architecture of their work. Compositionally, they create dense visual tales and fables, which I enjoy riffing off of within my own storyscapes.

     I speak of Asian and Northern European because I don’t like referencing East and West. Doing so furthers separation between people and space and time, which my work endeavors to unite. The breadth and brightness of my palette, as well as the individuality of and yet connection between my many figures, is meant to produce an overall sensation of effervescence. I want to instigate a feeling of karmic, energetic release—of worship, of joining, of expansive experience.