For years, my paintings have deployed a type of male figure one writer dubbed “St. Beach Boy,” but who, as another wrote, is just along for the ride while I try to put him to work, hopefully engaging themes that can be considered universal. I think of him as Everyman, my Muse, and much like a stem cell—malleable, hardworking, and eager to please, animating a mix of styles and iconographies that can be considered, like him, beautiful. In the past couple of years, I have brought storyboards and abstraction into play. Overall, I consider the work a map or document or testimony—of life, the intersection of unlikely circumstances, and the layering of past and present. I keep asking myself how art can be relevant to anyone in our world today, but if you can lead viewers to make the leap between the circumstances of these artworks and the circumstances of their own lives, that’s when you’re onto some answers that count.