Dystopia is an easy out for all artists, a swear word in a rap song. I paint for my own self-worth. How do I make this crazy ****ing (oops) **** (oops) function? I ask myself when I begin to paint. The paintings are resolved when the conflict between “proper” and instinctive are at peace. I repudiate all ideas of ground, depth, and image, turning my back on formalism. Painting cannot escape painting, but maybe my romanticism will lead to conclusion without a script.

Sorry about the language, Grandpa.

My work exploits the narrative potential of painting. A painting cannot encompass the entirety of a narrative, but it can imply one. It functions more like a single scene rather than the whole story. When we take a scene out of context, we are left to fill in the gaps. For every person, for every story, the interpretation of the scene will be unique. In this manner, I allow room for viewers to enter my paintings and complete the stories with their own past experiences.

I invite the viewer to enter a vision of the world run amuck, unsure whether this place is a video game, a dream, or a joke. Nature presented as a plaything, something to be arranged and erased at a whim, regardless of the consequences. The mark struggles against the artifice of the awkward environment, and I am simply along for the ride.

Using pencil reconnects me with my childhood. Drawing has become a means to explore my relationship to nature and my identity as an artist while dipping my toe into the conversation of paint.

This collection of sculptural chunks—lumps, indescribable masses of material, clumsily constructed and naively glazed—are deposited in a setting that has been drastically overturned by the human hand. The cycle of industry and demand has disrupted and contaminated the sublimity of a truly divine earth.

My paintings revolve around private interiors and everyday objects piled up over time. I am interested in the sensation of encountering a familiar room you have never seen before. This may be a contradictory experience, feeling both comforting and disconcerting, like falling asleep upright in a chair.

The subjects I investigate are often symptomatic of society’s nervousness and its shortage of self-criticality. I search for phenomena that at one time felt strange and new, but have since been accepted and reduced to being commonplace and unchallenged. My drawings take a position of political ambiguity and exemplify the condition of cultural fatigue that arises out of our instant media climate. By not passing judgment on issues that may be present, such as violence, race, or our faith in technology, my drawings point to conversations greater than themselves.

I am interested in the most fundamental element of the graphic arts—the mark. I am currently exploring the idea of marks as objects and modules that repeat and evolve into larger nondescript forms. In my paintings, the process starts with a simple doodle or sketch made up of marks based on an abstract notion, such as an emotion or personality trait. This doodle serves as a generator from which I can extrude three-dimensional forms via the computer and 3D modeling software. I cultivate these groupings by duplicating them over and over again, building complexity and mass into the model.

The My Little Pony is a nostalgic object that has compelled me to tell real and imagined stories of my personal past, present, and future. I create hybrid characters and alter egos that are products of repressed desires and fantasies. Contemporary painting motifs and ideologies are juxtaposed with those from history to create elaborate and delicate play worlds that float, burst, and drip with flashy pop colors and candied sparkle.

When I paint, I open the door to a parallel universe built from my own memories, fantasies, and insecurities, and populated by figures that simultaneously reflect this world and exist apart from it. The strangeness of allowing personal narratives to interact freely with the primordial effects of shape and color can feel a bit like trying to improvise a song in iambic pentameter, at 180 beats per minute, while free falling. The formal demands of the activity alone leave little room for hesitation, and melodrama is often an enticing life raft (or parachute, to stick with the metaphor).