Instructions Upon My Death

If you love me, DON”T put me in a box, drop me in a hole, or cover me with dirt among the bugs and worms. Fire’s the thing. Muster the alchemy and turn me into gas and ash and dust – back to where I came from. Set me free to the winds and let my soul fly with the birds. Somewhere high, vast, and limitless. That’s for me.

I’ve been fortunate to experience remote landscapes around the globe, from the highest mountains to the middle of oceans. I have an affinity for infinity, reveling in being up high where I can see forever and glory in limitless vistas unspoiled by humans. This vastness of space – with implications of eternity, mortality, and the Void – can both uplift and terrify as our sense of self recedes.  It is there we embrace both the permanence and temporality of life and confront our own insignificance.

My reimagined landscapes, cobbled from ancient memories, daily observations, and dreamings from deep inside, make no attempt to paint the conventional “reality” of what I’ve seen. Rather, I use strategic hyperbole and tactical distortions to capture the light and the drama and convey my awe for the daily tableau of change and transience. In spite of the appearance of permanence, the landscape, like us, is in constant flux. These conflicts and tensions within nature are where past and future merge.

Mimicking the way wind and water erode and eruptions reshape the landscape, I push the paint around, layering it and rubbing it away. I explore the juxtapositions, the inversions, and the ambiguities. Influenced by Richard Diebenkorn, Wolf Kahn, Thomas Sgouros, I’m intrigued by where the vertical meets the horizontal, the warm meets the cold, and the ephemeral collides with the fixed. I feature the fugitive nature of sky and water by exaggerating their fleeting forms, breaking down their shapes, and endowing them with unnatural hues. By jamming complementary colors cheek to jowl, I tease out the tensions that tell each landscape’s story and convey its singular sense of place.

In an increasingly simulated world, my concentration on landscape is a turn back to that which precedes us and will survive us. By redirecting our gaze to these unspoiled, uninhabited places, we remind ourselves of our origins, our responsibilities, and our insignificance. It is my way of understanding my time and place in the world order, connecting through shared memories, and appreciating the purity and fragility of nature while probing for the Sublime.