Artist Statement

Through representational painting and drawing, my work expressively combines topics of hyper-consumerism, farming, food, and drug systems in the United States, animal welfare concerns, harms of contemporary industrialization, and anthropic harmony. Many factors inspire my thinking and academic research preceding the physical creation of my artwork, ranging from radical explorations of environmental activism in the mistreatment of humans and animals alike due to large-scale farming systems to the influences surrounding Rudolf Steiner’s creations of Anthroposophy and biodynamic farming. Since my work is rooted in contemporary environmental concerns caused by humanity, I find academic research to be the primary location for investigation, where my ideas sprout that lend to my subject matter. Such research is as much a part of my paintings and drawings as are the paints and pens I move around to create different compositions for them. 

What I paint and what I draw exist in separate styles. My paintings are an evocation of large and subtle disruptions, often in their concepts they are spelled out letter by letter. Carmine painted toenails of a bare legged broiler chicken. Papaver somniferum in its many forms from a bucolic poppy field to the crushed Oxycontin powder accounting for the ruthless epidemic taking countless innocent lives across the United States. Other paintings serve within a more subtle pleasantry, a slice of strawberry shortcake floating through the sky, or a beach crab harmlessly dragging a half-smoked cigarette on the shore. My drawings are informal scientific illustrations, often exploring architectural histories or food and plant groups in relation to the adapted cuisines I grew up with. My work exists in its core as my life-long, vibrantly blossomed fascination with the food that I eat and understanding where it comes from. The result of viewing my life as not defined by, but enamored by food is the neverending, free falling rabbit hole of  amorphic curiosity, usually spat out in the form of some kind of meticulous culmination of agriculture and art history. I am and will always be expanding my knowledge of such histories, shifting the weight of my work within such spheres of understanding.