My paintings are spaces where energy moves matter. Events double back to devour themselves, momentum overtakes strategy, tectonic plates meet and collide. The paintings reflect my experiences of great western landscapes the shock of unabsorbed events. The slick paint resembles oil spills and hot toxic color fields: beautiful pictures of terrible things. California is a place where we are caught off guard, a place of gambling, chance, and change. “Land marred and poisoned is disarmingly beautiful and dramatic in its tragedy.”—Robert Redford.
I paint it.
I paint on sheets of mylar laid flat on a 9 × 9 foot table. The mylar tilts like a landscape. The topography below the mylar helps generate the composition of each painting. Thick black sweeps and iridescent skim coats are marks made without the scaled imprint of hand or brush. Liquid marks leave evidence of something having happened. Corrosive flecks of soda ash cake like battery acid on the edges of the paint, irridescent Cristalina fills the pools with glitz. The translucent surface of the mylar allows the edges to disappear into the wall. Light penetrates directly through clear pools of medium to the wall beyond. The architecture of the wall is subverted.
I make the space between things visible. The empty space allows motion. I paint what I know is there but cannot see.