cover Painting

My paintings are translations of personal experiences through time and spaces—spaces that are opening up and closing in, and entrances into spaces being blocked or obscured. I use indirect and direct processes—from staining, to scraping and preserving areas with tape—to directly scrawling into the surface or adding on paint with a series of tools, sometimes squeezing paint onto the surface straight from the tube. Throughout the work I am actively composing a relationship between a variety of processes and materials. I tap into a type of meditative state while reacting to each color, layer, or mark at a time—always striving to think a few steps ahead while considering the painting’s overall evolution. The curiosity of small, unexpected outcomes keeps me engaged or motivated along the way. I react physically and visually to the paintings as they organically emerge, and establish a buildup or climax leading to a definitive end or tension created through the interaction of these different colors, stains, marks and structures being created. The spaces created within the paintings are informed from my history of painting graffiti on trains and watching them move across the country—to experiences being in a stationary position actively drawing landscapes as I’m moving across the country on an Amtrak train—to now drawing while commuting on trains and busses throughout Portland. While this body of work is inspired by these moments and documentations of landscapes, the finished product exists and operates as a constructed, material space dealing with paint and mediums composed on a surface—different from a direct representation of illusionistic space. Along with thinking about movement through transit I’ve also been spending time as an active participant within “pick-up” soccer games in Portland. This led me to observing the relationship of a gray, misty landscape as players and balls of neon colors dart across the playing field. This blurring or trailing of landscapes and forms are removed from their sources and translated onto the paintings as gestures and other bits of physical evidence. The end result contains colors and compositions inspired by Portland’s ever-changing cityscape— combined with the spacing, action and timing of sports and physicality.