"Rhythmic Rectangles Composition" Painting

I make paintings that are, at their core, a way of thinking. My starting point is almost never an image; it’s an idea, usually pulled from cognitive science, complexity theory, mathematics, music, or physics. I’m drawn to these fields because they all wrestle with the same underlying question I do: how does meaning emerge from parts? How do simple elements combine into something that behaves like more than their sum?

For me, subject matter is a tool, not a destination. I choose what a painting is of (an object, a figure, a composition) based on what best serves what the painting is about. This is why I no longer separate my “formalist” work from my “conceptual” work. For years I only showed my figurative pieces publicly, while my sketchbooks were full of abstract color and compositional studies I treated as private exercises. I’ve come to believe that split was false. A painting exploring Gestalt principles through pure form is doing the same kind of thinking as a painting built around a specific idea from consciousness studies: both are investigations into how combination creates meaning.

Curiosity isn’t just a subject I return to; it’s a methodology. I study how curiosity is triggered, psychologically, and I build that into the work itself, structurally withholding, revealing, and repeating in ways designed to provoke it. I want my paintings to make a clear statement while still leaving genuine room for the viewer to complete the meaning on their own terms. That space, the beholder’s share, isn’t an accident; it’s designed.

Underneath all of this is a set of things I’m trying to build toward, not against: curiosity, boldness, a DIY willingness to make something remarkable with whatever’s on hand,
playfulness, and depth. I want the work to be generous: to enrich rather than lecture, to uplift without being saccharine or preachy. That’s a harder needle to thread than cynicism, and it’s the one I’m most interested in threading. Ultimately, I paint because it’s how I process the world, other people, and my own mind. The work is less a record of conclusions than a physical trace of the thinking itself.