This is an expansion of the artist statement I posted on the about page of my website.
My paintings and works on paper document my emotional and intellectual life. They are singular impressions, more like diary entries than dissertations, and are related only by relevance to my experience and the passing of time.
I begin a painting with random mark-making, like throwing, printing, or splattering paint. I analyze what I see and ask, “if this is true, what else is true?” then add a new element based on the answer. Like an actor in improv theater, I “Yes, and…” my way through a narrative – ending up with an image instead of a skit.
Each image represents an isolated feeling or thought, but all the images together tell a larger story about the trajectory of my experience as a person and my development as an artist. My accountability for the truth and permanence of this story is an important part of my identity, which is why I never work outside of my sequentially numbered series, and never destroy or hide any of the works.
I developed my process over a ten year period, beginning in 2002, while working exclusively in Moleskine sketchbooks. I adhered to strict rules, including numbering the pages, never tearing one out, signing each one as it was finished, and never retouching one that was signed. When I reached the end of a book, I went back and forced myself to complete and sign any unfinished pages before starting the next book. I then cut the book apart, scanned the drawings, and put them in chronological order on my website.
In 2011, I began working outside of the books, organizing my works on paper into numbered series to keep my rules intact. I continued to work on increasingly larger pieces of paper until 2017, when I made my first series of works on canvas. Those canvases were 30 by 40 inches, and I’m up-scaling again with my recent canvases measuring 4 by 6 feet, some of which I put together to make diptychs of 6 by 8 feet.
These new, large paintings have a different feel than my small works on paper, yet they are a seamless continuation of the project I began with the Moleskine books. I still create improvised psychological narratives that document my experience in real time. I still number the works, create them in chronological series, and make them all public on my portfolio website, which I view as my permanent record. All of my paintings and works on paper are there, in descending chronological order, dating back to my first Moleskine.