Artist Statement

The world is unknowable. Yet as I get older, I keep returning to two essential truths. One is impermanence: everything is always changing. The other is unity: every single thing is always related to every single other thing. 

Painting is one of the ways I wear down my own resistance to these truths. Working from observation, I am a transient creature honoring the totality of a passing moment.

Like every place in the world, every painting is a web of nesting, interlocking relationships. It is a unity in which nothing can be added or removed without everything being different. The seamlessness of each painting celebrates another unique and irreplaceable now: being this, seeing this, inventing this, at this time.

Realist painting’s sleight of hand is ideally suited to this task. Painting’s first magic trick, turning a two-dimensional jigsaw puzzle of light shapes and shadow shapes into three-dimensional forms, creates its second magic trick, transforming those forms into metaphor and meaning. This double trick makes painting the perfect language for playing hide and seek with reality.

It is delightful to me that something as completely unreliable as the visual record of a painting is an unfailing illustration of two eternal truths: this moment is passing. This moment is complete.