At a time when U.S. history is being actively revised or removed from public view, I make oil paintings using the language of 19th-century U.S. painting to see the present.

The work comes out of twenty years spent in American Civil War reenactments, where history is less a fixed story than something continually staged, revised, and believed. I often took on the role of artist-correspondents such as Winslow Homer, using painting as a way to look at this populist-subculture from inside it.

I return to monuments, uniforms, saddles, and other images that have helped define the country and paint them as I encounter them now. These paintings begin as a need to feel connected to history and from seeing how often it’s in front of me.