I usually begin a painting with a very structured idea in place—but that all goes to hell once I am seduced by the process.

Through mixed-media drawings, paintings, and sculptures, my work captures the imaginative curiosity of childhood and the universal desire for escape, thrill, and play in adults. Structures of work are combined with geometric elements in vibrant colors and patterns, becoming lighthearted toys removed from the realities of hardship and danger. A nocturnal world of dreamlike and precarious amusement rides and playscapes is envisioned, inspired by vintage playground equipment, children’s toys, and implements of construction. I invite the viewer to pause and

The organization of space, the essentiality of color, and the quality of light fascinate me. Depicting the natural world exactly is not what I do. Instead, my work reflects what I see and how I feel over time. I generally develop the painting from several small drawings worked on location.

My work is based on autobiographical events in day-to-day life. I draw from a variety of source material and practices, ranging from personal and found photographs to abstraction and direct observation.

I make paintings of the figure as a way to understand desire, which functions in my work in part as a fantasy about being both subject and maker. Throughout my childhood, I was a frequent subject of my father’s paintings and photographs, resulting in my being potently aware, from a very young age, of being looked at and depicted.

I have always been a vivid dreamer. Some years ago, I started journaling when I woke up. What fascinates me are the bizarre images that come to me, such as a deceased friend looking at her tiny skeleton in a shoe box, fish swimming by in a subway station, or a dress made out of Wonderbread wrappers that needs a zipper. Sometimes it is a whole scene or narrative, sometimes a word or two, and sometimes just an image. At first, these were just for my own contemplation and amusement. They were too intimate and embarrassing to share with anyone. Gradually, after

I am fascinated with qualia and the nature of our perception. My paintings are explorations in Chromoluminarism, ambiguous geometry, and abstract illusion. I often incorporate the Pareidolia Effect (the psychological phenomenon whereby the viewer’s brain organizes abstract elements into familiar patterns, shapes, and forms unique to the individual). Through the device of pareidolia, I intend that the viewer rather than the image provide meaning. By creating a visual field in which image and color blend optically and shift as the viewer interacts with the painting, I destabilize

For these works, I took facial impressions with foil and made paintings of the masks’ interiors from observation. The inverted features become reverse portraits, the inside of someone’s head abstracted into unrecognizable prisms of reflected color. Painting will be dead when looking is dead, when we start receiving all visual input from video transmissions sent to the chip implanted in the visual cortex of our brains rather than through our eyes. Then the physicality of an image won’t matter, because nothing will have physicality. Since those days are coming soon, I

I am looking at systems and how they are used to better understand other fields, how they are employed in society, and what purpose they serve. I look through the lens of cybernetics to find a context for these inquiries. Cybernetics is a human-tomachine relationship that calculates and predicts the outcomes and consequences of systems. This field seeks to find the best solutions and the perfect equation for a particular area, such as ecological or social systems. Often, the goal of cybernetics is to find hidden connections that machines can see and that the

I’d rather not be indoors while painting, so usually I paint scenarios I long for. Over the past several years, I have embarked on three bicycle tours exploring 4,000 miles of American desert and coastline, seeking time away from the spectacle of society as well as learning to be quiet in nature. In presenting these distinctly North American landscapes and playscapes, I imagine distant human pasts as well as potentially distant futures.