STATEMENT OF WORK

In my work I attempt to represent human encounters with a damaged post-industrial landscape. The imagery draws from scientific realities about our present-day environment and impending threats to our existence on Earth. My primary concerns are the need to confront climate change, the polluting of our land, resource wars, and the displacement of disenfranchised peoples and whole ecosystems in the name of progress. My work illustrates that, when confronting these realities, the path to a sustainable future lies within our shared inner strength and creativity.

My paintings reflect my conceptual interest in the Anthropocene landscape and geo-engineering. Some recurring motifs in my work are invented structures that interact with sunlight, wind, and/or rainwater, as well as inhabited nomadic huts, all situated within a barren landscape. Along with portraying these structures, my work tells a narrative of the increasingly violent weather of climate change, and the technological sublime, to reflect on the dangerously dysfunctional interdependence of man and nature. I create paintings that flow freely between authenticity and parody, fetishized forms and flatness, the Romantic sublime and post-apocalypse, invention and destruction. 

In the Geo-Robots series I confront serious ecological issues with humor and playfulness. The sculptures blur the line between artist, geo-engineer, and backyard tinkerer. Precariously constructed from simple materials, these objects are a meditation on the fragile relationship between humanity and nature. I often look to the act of camping as indirect inspiration, as it is one of the last cultural rituals asking us to bring only what we need, cultivate our self-reliance, and promote a temporary stewardship of a shared wilderness. 

Most recently, I have been concentrating on how these concepts intermingle with the landscape of the Hudson River Valley.