The Little House Series
Drawing from the energetic distortions and color of mid 20th century cartoons, and with a droll reference to the geometry and the internal framing of late 20th century abstraction, the Little House series is a kind of mad regionalism of tumble down rural frame houses and domestic detritus.
The cutaway houses, like little stages, or the architecture in early renaissance painting, and the little frame house exteriors, both of which are always too small for their inhabitants, have a sweetness and pathos and yet house a dark narrative of claustrophobia, confrontation and failure, but in a bright comic package that is the stuff of daily life and a sly critique of the nature of power and the American Dream.
Paintings 2012-2014
I feel a tension when I work between how to depict or render recognizable objects and how to make them part of a more abstract space. The sometimes giddy imagery might seem to undercut this ambition, but in a way that's the point - how beautifully crazy can it be. How clearly can the space be described or structured even if it is everyday gestures, a Mary Jane shoe, the slouch of a 1950's model, or a cartoon version of an African mask by way of Brancusi's Newborn. In fact, how clearly can her slouch be described as that clearly structured space, or anyway part of it. I don't want it to just be a picture of things.
Rather than working from observation or preparatory drawings, I begin instead by drawing with charcoal directly on the surface, establishing a sort of scaffold on which to "hang" the imagery. As certain bits-figures objects or abstract forms (that I feel have a likeness to actual objects) present themselves, I begin to develop some of them along with the overall structure.
I am interested in the process of memory, ie. which lines, as I'm drawing, seem to conjure objects and what part of my experience the objects/images will reference - cultural (film, art, cartoons) or daily gesture, or even gesture reinterpreted via a cultural mash up. All of it is history, as well as a personal history, the world I came into, and live in.
Drawing from the energetic distortions and color of mid 20th century cartoons, and with a droll reference to the geometry and the internal framing of late 20th century abstraction, the Little House series is a kind of mad regionalism of tumble down rural frame houses and domestic detritus.
The cutaway houses, like little stages, or the architecture in early renaissance painting, and the little frame house exteriors, both of which are always too small for their inhabitants, have a sweetness and pathos and yet house a dark narrative of claustrophobia, confrontation and failure, but in a bright comic package that is the stuff of daily life and a sly critique of the nature of power and the American Dream.
Paintings 2012-2014
I feel a tension when I work between how to depict or render recognizable objects and how to make them part of a more abstract space. The sometimes giddy imagery might seem to undercut this ambition, but in a way that's the point - how beautifully crazy can it be. How clearly can the space be described or structured even if it is everyday gestures, a Mary Jane shoe, the slouch of a 1950's model, or a cartoon version of an African mask by way of Brancusi's Newborn. In fact, how clearly can her slouch be described as that clearly structured space, or anyway part of it. I don't want it to just be a picture of things.
Rather than working from observation or preparatory drawings, I begin instead by drawing with charcoal directly on the surface, establishing a sort of scaffold on which to "hang" the imagery. As certain bits-figures objects or abstract forms (that I feel have a likeness to actual objects) present themselves, I begin to develop some of them along with the overall structure.
I am interested in the process of memory, ie. which lines, as I'm drawing, seem to conjure objects and what part of my experience the objects/images will reference - cultural (film, art, cartoons) or daily gesture, or even gesture reinterpreted via a cultural mash up. All of it is history, as well as a personal history, the world I came into, and live in.