1:38a / Seoul, South Korea Painting

I see each of my paintings as a dense collection of layered missteps guided by a single underlying intention. In most of my work, I’m attempting a semi-realistic interpretation of an imagined environment, employing realism and abstraction in a way that gives the impression of a scene on the verge of collapse. The photographic source material I use serves as both a jumping off point and something to fight against. I try to glean from the source only that which resonates with me and dispose of the rest so as to avoid slavish depiction. The ideal result is a faint echo or a total reconstruction of what is observed, anchored by recurring themes of nostalgia, my own existential anxieties and the corruption of human memory. I view the painting process as a form of self-examination – the end product’s value lying in the thoughts, emotions and memories I’ve projected onto the objective source.