1 earthquake baby - watercolor and acrylic on yupo / 51'' x 42'' / 2009
2 it goes so fast it talks - watercolor and acrylic on yupo / 51'' x 42'' / 2009
3 the heart on his sleeve - watercolor and acrylic on yupo / 51'' x 42'' / 2009
4 west is best - watercolor and acrylic on yupo / 51'' x 42'' / 2009
Sometimes it’s problematic to tell it like it is because there are so many ways to say it; or it’s because some things happen to be many things at once. I cite the complexity of portrayal in my work. I paint to develop a more faceted way of telling I work within a convoluted process. It’s a seemingly fixed and totally flawed system; but it’s one that helps access the anomalies of depiction. Initially I stage simple projects with my peers like creating and wearing a mask. The projects, despite their absurdity, generate a lot of great source material. I use the material, be it an object or documentation, to stand-in for my peers. This use alludes to the notion that one thing can connote another simultaneously. I then pilfer parts- descriptive, deceptive, arbitrary- to inform how I also complicate portrayal in my paintings. Because I don’t want to limit the portrayal to one approach, I avoid blatant representation or objective abstraction. Instead I hodgepodge forms together- this confuses the paintings’ origins, but it also builds something new entirely. Amidst confusion and newfound clarity, the paintings develop. Passages are at times self-reflexive: flat and sloppy and clearly material. But then occasionally they segue into depiction. Each work turns into a composite of visual idioms. The fragments I make and combine are meant to entertain more than one thought about a single subject. My paintings traffic within that elusive space of revealing and concealing, depicting and abstracting. They are residual paintings- portraits, still lives, narratives- made by an obsessive rearticulating in form and material. Pigment and picture draw attention to their own existence while they insinuate another. While I obfuscate through my process, hints of my peers, my projects, and other imagery survive. They are at once specific, ambiguous, fragmented, and whole. This is my way of describing when things are more than themselves.