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Good fiction, while by definition “untrue,” nevertheless elicits human empathy by way of its emotional believability. My work strives for believability while maintaining a stubbornly artificial appearance, and like much theater is stylized and unrealistic to provoke a viewer’s sense of what constitutes visual truth.
The genre of landscape implies a relationship between an observer and his surroundings. How we illustrate this exposes our personal and collective attitudes towards the world around us. My fascination with landscape’s long-held connection with the sublime and the spiritual was a launching point for an ongoing body of work that questions artists whose works reverently address these themes. My deep respect for them manifests itself in dark comedy: I have a compulsion to paint the instability, frustration, and confusion that are in
attendance on such spiritual quests. The destabilized landscapes I make are at once sincere and absurd, cartoon-ish enough so as not to be mistaken for any real locale yet menacing enough to provide a sense of impending danger for the would-be truth seeker.
In my work it is intentionally unclear whether Nature or the human recording of it is responsible for creating obstacles to movement and vision. No vista opens up to allow a perch for peaceful contemplation. Space and perspective are awkward and claustrophobic. Figure and ground separate in some areas only to fuse together in others. Pattern, graphic form, serial imagery, and a limited, high contrast palette are devices used to both simplify and emphasize the artificial quality of the images.
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