I’m an artist working out of the Nashville area. I’m fascinated by the power of images and how they affect us emotionally, spiritually, and psychologically. I’m continually exploring how the lived experience of myself and those around me can be translated into drawings and paintings.
That’s the short version; there’s an extended artist statement below.
I consider myself a contemporary artist, but I’m less focused on asking questions about art and more focused on asking questions about life. I’m interested in the reality of lived experience - the world as we encounter it, with all its holes, bends, inconsistencies, and contradictions. I’m interested in what happens when we allow the experience itself, rather than a predetermined artistic language, to guide the work.
Style and method are secondary to understanding the nature of my subject. Some concepts are better suited to drawing, some to painting; some to the abstract, some to specific detail. I let the subject speak first and try to give it the form it’s best suited to. As a result, there’s considerable variety in my work.
I’m skeptical that progress is synonymous with improvement. Modernism is undoubtedly a triumph, and I greatly admire its many movements and innovations. But its faith in continual experimentation has made novelty itself a measure of artistic value. As artists have developed increasingly differentiated ways of interpreting reality, universal elements of human experience have become subordinate to individual perspectives. We’ve lost something along the way - life itself is now considered too ordinary a subject for art. We have become experts at dissecting reality, but have forgotten how to interpret the experience of it as a whole.
In my work, I’m attempting to return to reality - not Realism, but a renewed focus on the world as we experience it. I’m trying to recover something that I believe contemporary art has neglected, while also freely employing the incredible power of modernist techniques.