From Beneath and Far Below

A solo presentation at Quonset Hut, Louisville, 2025

Artist Statement:

I paint multi-layered landscapes that challenge linear time and that break up traditional

pictorial space. The resultant interplay among the hidden and visible mimics destruction of the

natural world. Preliminary image research includes public media documentation of natural

disasters, photographs of Kentucky wilderness, and the cultivated garden. This body of work

also references Hudson River School, Impressionist, and Futurist paintings. Each work begins

with a sketched amalgamation of these sources in a silica-based acrylic, which I formulate in

the studio by combining binders, additives, and pigment dispersions. Modifications in the

medium’s composition alter cure times. Often, the surface of the paint dries within hours,

enabling the addition of up to three overlays in a single studio session. This process of accrual

also allows for a spectrum of opacities. Transparent mixtures permit some preceding

information to remain and therefore indicate a departure, a movement across time from one

phase to the next. Other formulas cover completely, opaque and impassable. The works

consist of anywhere between six and fifteen coatings. Between each, I adhere a temporary

veneer, preserving past versions of the image to be revealed alongside their later completed

counterparts. Minimal addition of a thickening agent to the binders produces a highpoint where

the paint meets the edge of a mask, leaving behind a kind of seam once the tape is removed.

Fragments of the past stitch themselves to those of the present, creating a temporal

topography. In some paintings, physical cutouts further challenge spacial illusions by exposing

a second panel mounted beneath. Instead of a demonstration of space, the picture plane

frames passages of time as it "forgets" the concealed and "remembers" the exposed. This

renegotiation establishes a hierarchy, or contest, within the composition. These objects

become chaotic and broken. Situated along a suspension between what remains and what

might be, my paintings reflect how the climate crisis alters the planet more quickly than ever

before.