Artist Statement:

I used to make very clean, precise paintings. So clean that at my first shows, people told me I was a great graphic designer.

One day, while making another neat painting, I ran my hand through the wet canvas in a moment of frustration. After stepping back, I realized it was the most interesting mark I had ever made. Looking at my paint-soaked glove, I realized I had never painted with my hands before, or with anything besides a brush.

Paint isn't simply a medium; it is the medium. It isn't meant to be applied, it's meant to be moved. Scraped, gobbed, attacked. Pushed and pulled. Built up and torn apart.

Since then, my practice has turned toward the act and materiality of painting. I want to push paint beyond the boundaries of the substrate, building it up until the surface behaves more like a relief than a painting. I want the paint to occupy space, to have weight, texture, and physical presence. I don't want to hide the hand or material that made what you see.

Sometimes I work from pure instinct, moving the paint where it wants to go until something emerges. Other times, I need something real to put in front of me. So, I build objects: lamps, record players, cars, couches. I sculpt them out of cardboard, then paint from them. I want what I paint to already be in my own world. I don't want to translate it, I want to know it intimately: every ridge, every plane, every imperfection.

In this way, my sculpture and my paintings become part of the same process. I want the world my work creates to be tangible, to be lived in, to be experienced rather than merely observed. I want it to be something you can grab onto.