Artist Statement
“Toil on, son, and do not lose heart or hope… You are not utterly forsaken. I, too, am here – here in the darkness waiting, here attentive, here approving of your labor and your dream.” ― Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again
My work explores the layering of rural and small-town America’s past upon its present. My paintings strive to blend the clarity of a photograph with the ambiguity of a memory.
I grew up, and reside today, in the Connecticut River Valley of Vermont – a region transitioning into post-pastoral ferality from an agrarian and small-scale industrial past, transformed by the coming of the interstate highway and American deindustrialization. Influenced by photographers such as Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein, and painters as diverse as Edward Hopper, Joseph Stella, and Franz Kline, the art I create resides in the uneasy half-light of places shaped by vanished economic forces.
While my subject matter is nominally representational, my techniques are unconventional, using tools such as a window washer’s squeegee to evoke manmade forms; or impressing paper towels onto wet paint in order to impart textures reminiscent of photographic halftone screens onto the surface; subtly evoking familiar visual cues not normally associated with the painterly lexicon.
Transformation of place and the passage of time is central to my practice. I travel by rail whenever possible; watching the passing landscape, tracing the remnants of what was and how it shapes the present. My work is about the poetics of environments of vanished economic drivers and what remains today. Have things that were once of unimaginable importance disappeared? Have communities that were marginalized or erased reemerged? What happens when the foundational elements of a place fundamentally change?
My work explores the layering of rural and small-town America’s past upon its present. My paintings strive to blend the clarity of a photograph with the ambiguity of a memory.
I grew up, and reside today, in the Connecticut River Valley of Vermont – a region transitioning into post-pastoral ferality from an agrarian and small-scale industrial past, transformed by the coming of the interstate highway and American deindustrialization. Influenced by photographers such as Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein, and painters as diverse as Edward Hopper, Joseph Stella, and Franz Kline, the art I create resides in the uneasy half-light of places shaped by vanished economic forces.
While my subject matter is nominally representational, my techniques are unconventional, using tools such as a window washer’s squeegee to evoke manmade forms; or impressing paper towels onto wet paint in order to impart textures reminiscent of photographic halftone screens onto the surface; subtly evoking familiar visual cues not normally associated with the painterly lexicon.
Transformation of place and the passage of time is central to my practice. I travel by rail whenever possible; watching the passing landscape, tracing the remnants of what was and how it shapes the present. My work is about the poetics of environments of vanished economic drivers and what remains today. Have things that were once of unimaginable importance disappeared? Have communities that were marginalized or erased reemerged? What happens when the foundational elements of a place fundamentally change?