On the road between here and there are anonymous structures, mere rest stops for most of us. But not for Trevor Young. Where some see purgatory, he sees and paints an oasis; a portal becomes a destination. Young’s “non-places” coax us down the highway with their seductive smell of familiarity and french fries. His paintings are composites made of a lifetime of mental snapshots taken on countless trips to the drive-thru. We are simultaneously drawn to the slick veneers and repulsed by their lack of history.

I am concerned with developing a response to abstraction that addresses nuances of color and surface. My paintings combine depictions of flat and illusionistic space, developed systematically over periods of time that can extend from several months to several years. The surfaces of my work acquire a relief-like quality as I apply acrylic paint mixed with various mediums over collaged surfaces.

My paintings are a re-imagined portrayal of living in contemporary southern suburbia. They are intuitive responses to everyday surroundings that are transformed into unfamiliar and fictional situations. The image emerges through a process of erasure, mending, and embellishment of paint and collage. The use of collage as a preconceived “mark” forces the image and materials to interact with one another. Raised in a house in which the interior was a monochromatic brown, I now indulge in ebullient color.

My recent paintings express my own ambivalence and trepidation in relation to the contemporary male’s transition into adulthood. They are made of collages with images appropriated from found photographs of myself and close friends, and their formal and compositional elements suggest an ambiguous narrative.