San Francisco Slate Painting

I am a painter, architect and professor teaching design, theory, drawing, and painting analysis. I studied painting and architecture at Harvard University and Syracuse University and have won numerous awards including the Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome. For me, the daily ritual of painting operates as a form of research into a system of deep plastic spatial interplay built on an often latent formal structure. The internal relationships of visual composition are studied in a 'clearing of the zone - precinct making through edge definition' - approach to making and marking sites within a larger field. Though the painting does not necessarily represent literal conditions of architecture proper, my paintings are fields, gardens, sites, landscapes, plans, sections, elevations, and perspectives viewed from the ground, from the sky, and from the cosmos. This work operates within a realm of abstract painting that explores the idea that form + content are inextricably linked and ultimately reinforce each other's impact and effect. I am interested not only in composition as an end but in the ability of the formal and the visual construction of the image to signify complex space or place - that which is internal to, as well as outside of the defined boundary of the work. These studies characterized by marks, scrapes, scratches, lines, veils, texts, and frames can be understood as the work of the surveyor - measured sites governed by a solar compass that develop multiple contingent relationships within an activated field. This work continues to provide a deeper understanding of the spatial compositional possibilities that oscillate between painting, architecture, and landscape.