Artist Statement
I paint the moment just before you understand what you're looking at.
My work begins with places that hold a particular charge... often coastlines, the edge where land meets water. I photograph these places obsessively, drawn to compositions where the light is doing something impossible, or where the landscape feels like it's holding its breath. Then I translate them into paint, pushing toward abstraction until the recognizable image is just barely there.
I work in oil and cold wax on wood panel, building the surface in layers of thick impasto. The texture is not decorative... it's structural. It changes how light moves across the painting and gives the work a physical presence that a photograph never could. The paint itself becomes part of what the painting is about.
The feelings I'm chasing are mystery, wistfulness, and awe. The particular awe of standing somewhere so beautiful it almost frightens you. The wistfulness of a place that already feels like a memory while you're still standing in it. The mystery of light that makes the ordinary feel briefly sacred.
I want the people who live with my work to feel those things too... not all at once, but slowly, over time, on an ordinary Tuesday when the light in the room is just right.
More information