How I’m building my art practice

Let me introduce you to my place and my people.

I create my artwork in the mountainous, rural hometown I grew up in. This is a place where I’ve been lucky enough to have the space and independence to improve my artistic voice. I document this life by growing my evolving universe of characters, techniques, and symbolism. This process develops by layering and abstracting personal stories and imagery from my every day.  

Making landscape motivated art helps me to notice the changes in nature. The importance of being in wild places and walking through them; exploring them and taking care of them. Abstracting a subject makes me see it in a new way. Not only can I show a tree, cliff, or animal, but I can also share a feeling of the place they’re in. Small and dramatic shifts occurring in me or outside of myself have always changed my paintings for the better.

Trusting new ideas is important. I’ve worked hard on my art practice to improve the narratives of my paintings by being inside my thoughts and using the tools I have to deepen the finished pieces. I don’t paint from start to finish quickly. Time goes by in days or weeks while the final composition comes together.

I blend nature and people, abstracting both elements to tell a story. My thoughts from beginning to end fuzz the details. Features are found or get lost. I squirrel away and collect reference photos daily. Painting expands my memories of these days full of routine chores or exciting adventures. The steps in-between give me the sort of impulsive adaptations I need to expand on the reoccurring shapes I use to depict the landscape and what it holds.

My people and places are familiar to me. They are my friends, family, and home. Recognizable to a few, but they are also ghostly shapes who might remind you of people you have known. Places and people are similarly strangers, giving me new source material, bodies, shapes, and landmarks to explore.