How I’m building my art practice

Let me introduce you to my place and the people who live there.

I create my artwork in the mountainous, rural hometown where I grew up. This is a place where I’ve been lucky enough to have the space and independence to improve my artistic voice. I document this life by growing my evolving universe of characters, techniques, and symbolism. This process develops by layering and abstracting personal stories and imagery from my everyday life.  

Making landscape-motivated art helps me notice the changes in nature. The importance of being in wild places and walking through them, exploring them, and taking care of them. Abstracting a subject makes me see it in a new way. Not only can I show a tree, cliff, or animal, but I can also share a feeling of the place they’re in. Small and dramatic shifts, both within me and outside of myself, have always improved my paintings.

Trusting new ideas is important. I’ve worked hard on my art practice to enhance the narratives of my paintings by immersing myself in my thoughts and utilizing the tools at my disposal to deepen the finished pieces. I don’t paint from start to finish quickly. Time passes in days or weeks as the final composition takes shape.

I blend nature and people, abstracting both elements to tell a story. My thoughts from beginning to end fuzz the details. Features are found or get lost. I squirrel away and collect reference photos daily. Painting expands my memories of these days, full of routine chores or exciting adventures. The steps in between provide me with the impulsive adaptations I need to expand on the recurring shapes I use to depict the landscape and what it holds.

My people and places are familiar to me. They are my friends, family, and home. Recognizable to a few, but they are also ghostly shapes who might remind you of people you have known. Places and people are similarly strangers, giving me new source material, bodies, shapes, and landmarks to explore.