The stuff of dramatic tension — for me, a marriage of conflict and mystery — is a driving force behind my work. My characters run the gamut of life forms: a man choking on his meal, a sloth holding a skull, deformed peas inside a zippered peapod. My landscapes, too, contain “characters” that meld with the trees, mountains and waves all around.
I’m interested in themes like the marginalized outsider (“the Other”), death and decay, apocalypse, power struggle, and hubris. Though my work revels in the macabre, dark humor and the surreal, subtly rendered but often no less present are empowering concepts like perseverance and hope. Outright violence and the splendor of serenity are equally dull notions; with every painting, I shoot for depth and range to expose a more dynamic, true-to-life emotional current.
Some concepts come from my own mind while others grow organically from conversations I have, resulting in work that is more collaborative. Though I start with solid imagery, my work also eventually becomes a stream-of-consciousness rendering of the hidden narrative. Brushstrokes made during the heat of creation are instinctual, so even paintings created only weeks or days apart may contain noticeable differences in execution. The addition of deliberate marks comes during the final, refining stages.
Subject matter always informs my style, and I find it impossible to confine myself to any one particular style or genre — though I’ve tried many times. Abstract and loose, realistic and tight, process-based — all are salient modes of representation that hinge on my own instincts and the subject or theme at hand.