Artist Statement:
My work is a celebration of art for art’s sake. It’s truly about enjoying the process and creation of a work of art rather than on its end product. The intent of my work is to create a visual representation of my inner moods and thoughts through process art. My work emphasizes process as content, sometimes using a more formalist and self-referential approaches, and at other times using a structured approach to representation.
My inspirations are a combination of my experiences as a child of a military family, my own military service, familial art interests, and my future goals of becoming a counselor. My greatest influences are my mother and grandmother. I grew up watching and admiring their skills in painting and it created within me and I never grew tired of watching them be created from nothing and loved looking at them and hoping I could one day do the same. When I joined the military, art became an outlet for especially stressful times when I found that act of creating the artwork was cathartic.
As a result of these discoveries, almost all my artworks have to do with emotion and psychology to some degree. My latest works seek to embrace these attribute and push the boundaries between what is real and what is illusion.
For much of my artwork, I simply apply paint and let each brush stroke lead to the creation of the next. A twitch or slip of a wrist might create an interesting curve, or lead to a new pattern. Pausing for a break might inspire me to completely cover and re-do some parts of the painting which I’m not satisfied with. I let my moods influence color, brush marks, textures, etc. I mix paint and apply it with various techniques. I use brushes, pallet knives, cake decorating tools, toothpicks, my hands or any other random tools that come to mind to create textures and contrasts. I enjoy experimenting with paint and substrate, pushing the boundaries of what is actual and what is painted. I’ll add sculptural elements such as wood or clay to bring the work out into the real world while using paint to push things back into the canvas. Often, when I begin my artwork, I will not know what the end product will look like. I have created artworks that were directly inspired by the Rorschach tests while works were inspired by Sigmund Freud’s belief that dreams were the key to the subconscious mind. Some works were done to represent specific things, but all my artwork seeks to use technique to both assert and deny the picture plane and let the viewer become part of the world within the artwork.