I am interested in the structures that undergird loose seemingly chaotic fields. My paintings aim to echo the complexity of nature—layered, multifaceted, and constantly shifting. Painting is my way of navigating that complexity. Each finished work is an attempt to capture the sublime beauty of living within an uncertain universe.
Although grounded in abstraction, my work is deeply influenced by the world around me. It reflects both the natural environment and the complexities of contemporary life. I work simultaneously on multiple series of paintings, each with its own distinct identity, yet all are linked by shared concerns and sensibilities. Cross pollination abounds. A painting feels complete when it reaches a state of balance, when clarity and ambiguity coexist, and when the composition as a whole feels both alive and authentic. So it goes.
Titles usually emerge after the work is finished, during a quiet period of reflection.
This series invites multiple ways of interpretation through the repeated use of a simplified rectangular form. The rectangles function simultaneously as image, mark, and structure. They can be read as a course of bricks, suggesting accumulation, labor, and construction, or as a sequence of marks that records time. They also establish an underlying framework upon which the composition is built.
In several works, the imagery is expanded through the inclusion of, shoes or rags. These elements introduce a more overtly narrative dimension, evoking presence, use, and the traces of lived experience. Rather than functioning as illustrations, these images act as fragments or residues, deepening the emotional and conceptual resonance of the paintings. Together, the interplay between the rectilinear structure and these suggestive objects opens the work to multiple readings that move between materiality and metaphor.
This group of paintings shares the same underlying intentions as my fully abstract work, but operates more directly as a lament on mortality and aging. Although the themes are somber, they are offset by a lighter palette and moments of visual irony. This is exemplified by clusters of stacked newspapers, shoes, piles of clothing, and other domestic remnants depicted in the works, which hint at both mental disorientation and a sense of being out of sync with the present moment.
Other works in this group draw on imagery from eighteenth-century pastoral scenes, particularly the farm animals and rural life associated with Toile wallpaper. Stripped of its quaint and decorative role and embedded within a fragmented, modernist space, this imagery becomes distorted and surreal, undermining its original associations with comfort and order. Across the series, the paintings use this dislocation to foreground a tension between familiarity and estrangement, where nostalgic motifs no longer offer reassurance but instead contribute to a sense of unease.
These paintings belong to a series I call Bitter Rice, developed after revisiting Willem de Kooning’s painting Excavation(1950). In my research, I learned that de Kooning credited the 1949 Italian neorealist film Bitter Rice as a source of inspiration for that painting. Rather than returning to Excavation itself, I chose to return to the film, using its cinematic language as the point of departure for my own work.
The film is a volatile mix of social commentary and crime drama, depicting laborers planting rice seedlings in flooded fields amid escalating conflict. Shot from above, scenes dissolve into chaotic struggles of bodies in mud, a churn of sharp elbows and contorted limbs. These physical tensions and fractured forms are evident in these works.
I am equally drawn to Fernand Léger’s Contrast of Form series (1914), which can be read as a battle of volumes. The dialogue between de Kooning’s fusion of Cubist and Surrealist space and Léger’s emphasis on movement and mass informs my studio practice.
It is within these investigations that I choose to begin building new systems for defining form in abstraction. This pursuit is not purely formal or art-historical, but a way to engage the same forces that shape our momentum and to reflect on our place within a larger, uncertain cosmos.
These works vary in intent and materials but are often paying homage to Marcel Duchamp in subtle ways. There is a dialogue between materials and their function, but are usually done in some opposing logical fashion. Some examples use classical architecture as a departure point, but the structures and proportions are authored with a surrealist narrative.
The ‘constructivist’ wood sculpture Ice 9 (1979) pays tribute to both Caspar David Friedrich’s painting, The Sea of Ice (1824) and a nod to Kurt Vonnegut, and his concept of Ice 9 from his book 'Cat's Cradle'.