Enough to Go Around Painting

I’m interested in how we use architecture to relate to nature and to each other. Our structures serve to provide shelter and safety in ways that allow us to thrive. They also can be very specific in facilitating how we practice religion or indulge in recreation. We zone and district our structures and activities in response to our social needs. My current series of work, Fun House, uses visual elements and references to amusement park icons and attractions. In some of the work, they are combined with residential house architecture in surrealist landscapes that question our usual tendencies toward separating our activities and social functions. I like the memories, emotions, and connections that are uncovered when these normal boundaries are removed. In other portrait/self portrait pieces, the use of this iconography comments on our psychology and the fragmentation found in our typical daily lives. I hope to provoke a re-evaluation of our assumptions about the world and how we chose to live in it. Most of my pieces are paint on panel. I begin by using a process of hand sketching with digital and paper collage to create the imagery and composition in my paintings or collages. The final sketches may be literally projected on the full size panel and then painted. Other works use actual collage, i.e. paper and miscellaneous materials, to achieve texture and layering qualities. Regardless, I feel my images are constructed and built and so share an approach similar to that of constructing architecture.