My work reflects the contradictions in how we conceptualize landscape, wilderness, and nature. It underscores the tension and confusion surrounding our attempt to maintain a modern lifestyle while trying to live within the environment in a sustainable way.

We expect to have—and have grown comfortable having—consumer goods that are destructive to our environment. We tend to frame the land culturally in a way that allows us to feel at ease with our unknowingly damaging lifestyle. Landscape painting portrays our understanding of what is valuable in nature and what our relationship with the environment should be. In my objects, I intend not only to celebrate the wonderment of being in the land but also accurately reflect the problematic ways in which we attempt to understand and define terms like “landscape,” “wilderness,” or “natural.”