Campus Resources

 My current body of work focuses on the aftermath of both man made and natural disasters.  I archive, appropriate, then digitally manipulate found photographs.  I situate these images somewhere in between abstraction and representation in order to create a dialogue with modernist painting through postmodern practice.  I draw and paint these images not only to further slow them down, but to also support traditional notions of the “sublime landscape,” one that is uncontrollably vast and frightening, within a contemporary context of anxiety and fear.  I choose to focus on moments of reprieve; quiet moments following a climax, where one can assess the physical and emotional damage created by previous events.  I am both drawn to these images and repelled by them.  They speak of a time where agenda setting, political rhetoric and consumption are perpetuated and often manufactured by the media.  As mass media sets the psychological and emotional tone for life as we know it, I work in an attempt to differentiate neurosis from my own understanding of reality. 

My work is built on an interest in social commentary and the undercurrents of visual culture. I attempt to investigate its' greater coercive potential through the self conscious, meditative act of drawing and painting.  My use of mediation and the reproducible source reinforces my own understanding of post modernity and the ubiquity of the photographic image in culture today, while manifesting itself in an abstracted photorealist painting style.  I am interested in uncovering a manipulated collective consciousness by recreating a pre-consumed, transmogrified image.  It is through reinterpretation, mediation, manipulation and context that I change their meanings.  

"Hotel" india ink on paper 50" x 41" 2013