Here Now - installation
Acrylic on canvas, 5 x 12 ft (triptych), 2023
Here Now, like other paintings in the series of the same name, evokes the passage of time with layers of meandering lines, each layer partially obscuring the ones below.
I’m inspired by aspects of writing, particularly stages of a narrative and their beginning-middle-end structure. Here, the passage of time begins in the depth of vertical layers and rises to the surface (unlike the later series, Lucretius, where I treat the passage of time as a linear construct like sentences on a page).
Each line is a unique, elongated “barcode,” suggesting particular events, memories and experiences, all occurring in the past, like leaves or fish below the ice on a frozen pond. Except for the top line – the last one executed – which completes the painting.
By keeping the layers and moments distinct, I try to inject tension between the accumulated history and the moment of completion, which is the painting’s perpetual “present.”
Here Now
Acrylic on canvas (triptych), 5x12 feet, 2023
Here Now, like other paintings in the series of the same name, evokes the passage of time with layers of meandering lines, each layer partially obscuring the ones below.
I’m inspired by aspects of writing, particularly stages of a narrative and their beginning-middle-end structure. Unlike a later series, Lucretius, where I treat the passage of time as a linear construct like sentences on a page, here, the passage of time begins in the depth of vertical layers and rises to the surface.
Each line is a unique, elongated “barcode,” suggesting particular events, memories and experiences, all occurring in the past, like leaves or fish below the ice on a frozen pond. Except for the top line – the last one executed – which completes the painting.
By keeping the layers and moments distinct, I try to inject tension between the accumulated history and the moment of completion, which is the painting’s perpetual “present.”
Camping
Acrylic on canvas, 42 x 42 inches, 2023
Replay
Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 inches, 2023
Lucretius
Acrylic on canvas, 42 x 42 inches, 2024
Permanent
Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 inches, 2023
We Forget We Don't Know Where We Are
Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 60 inches, 2023
Wilderness
Acrylic on canvas, 42 x 42 inches, 2023
How to feel
Watercolor and gouache on Arches paper, 10x14 inches, August 2022
Whatever is is
Watercolor and gouache on Arches paper, 9 x 12 inches, August 2022
We forget we don't know where we are (study)
Watercolor and gouache on rag paper, 8x8 inches, 2022
Ending
Watercolor and gouache on rag paper, 8x8 inches, 2021-2023
Replay (study)
Watercolor and gouache on rag paper, 8x8 inches, April 2022
Permanent (study)
Watercolor and gouache on rag paper, 8x8 inches, 2022
Writing (study)
Watercolor and gouache on Arches paper, 8 x 8 inches, 2022
Ending (study)
Watercolor and gouache on rag paper, 8x8 inches, December 2021
Wilderness (study)
Watercolor and gouache on rag paper, 8 x 8 inches, August 2022
Friends
Watercolor and gouache on rag paper with zipper, 7x9 inches, March 2022
Earlier times
Watercolor and gouache on rag paper, 8x8 inches, February 2022
Lucretius (study)
Watercolor on Arches paper, 8x8 inches, 2021
Lucretius
Watercolor on Arches paper, 8x8 inches, 2021
Later
Watercolor and gouache on hot press paper, 8x8 inches, 2021
Linear Thinking
Proposed installation at Ortega y Gasset, NYC, acrylic on drywall, 2021
Path
Watercolor and gouache on Arches paper, 18 x 24 inches, 2021
Ocean
Watercolor on State of California survey map, 7x10 inches, 2017
Breaths
Watercolor on Arches paper, 7x10 inches, 2016
Survival
Watercolor on hot press paper, 8x8 inches, 2021
All this time
Watercolor and gouache on hot press paper, 8x8 inches, 2021
Accentuate the positive
Watercolor and gouache on Arches paper, 16x20 inches, 2021
The End
Watercolor and gouache on Arches paper, 18 x 24 inches, 2020
Pond
Watercolor and gouache on Arches paper, 16 x 20 inches, 2021
Part of something
Watercolor and gouache on Arches paper, 16 x 20 inches, 2020
Hemispheres
Watercolor and gouache on Arches paper, 16 x 20 inches, 2020
Flannel
Watercolor and gouache on Arches paper, 16 x 20 inches, 2020
Heating with wood
Watercolor and gouache on Arches paper, 12x16 inches, 2020
What I'm feeling
Watercolor on Arches paper, 7x10 inches, 2018
Paris
Watercolor on Arches paper, 7 x 10 inches, 2017
Something about France
Watercolor on Arches paper, 7x10 inches, 2017
Milford Sound
Watercolor on Arches paper, 7 x 10 inches, 2018
Black egg
Watercolor on Arches paper, 7 x 10 inches, 2017
3 or 4
Watercolor on Arches paper, 7 x 10 inches, 2017
Leader in the rain
Watercolor on Arches paper, 7 x 10 inches, 2017
Barely visible waterfalls
Watercolor on Arches paper, 10 x 14 inches, 2017
Things go awry
Watercolor on Arches paper, 10 x 14 inches, 2017
Lake
Watercolor on Arches paper, 7x10 inches, 2017
Rock paper scissors
Watercolor on Arches paper, 7x10 inches, 2017
Swale
Watercolor on Arches paper, 7x10 inches, 2019
Heating with wood #7
Watercolor on Arches paper, 12 x 16 inches, 2019
Good morning
Watercolor on Arches paper, 7 x 10 inches, 2018
Now what?
Watercolor on Arches paper, 7 x 10 inches, 2018
This year
Watercolor on Arches paper, 7 x 10 inches, 2018
Tupistra Tupistroides
Watercolor on botanical print, 7 x 10 inches, 2018
With any luck
Watercolor on Arches paper, 7x10 inches, 2018
Blueberry sauce
Watercolor on Arches paper, 7x10 inches, 2018
In conclusion
Watercolor on Arches paper, 7x10 inches, 2017-18
Aphelandra Aurantiaca Roezlii
Watercolor on botanical print, 7x10 inches, 2016
Penstemon Laxiflorus
Watercolor on botanical print, 7x10 inches, 2016
Penstemon Cobaea
Watercolor on botanical print, 7x10 inches, 2017
Lachnanthes Tinctoria
Watercolor on botanical print, 7x10 inches, 2017
Not my president
Watercolor on Arches paper, 7x10 inches, 2016
Tripod
Watercolor on Arches paper, 5x7 inches, 2016
Ondate 1
Watercolor on Arches paper, 5x7 inches, 2017
Current work
ARTIST STATEMENT
When I first discovered the idea of a painting as a window, I was pulled in by what possibly existed beyond the window frame. Did the picture extend in all directions? If so, how far? By cropping a view of something larger, the picture frame, to me, suggested an infinite landscape. It’s that infinite landscape that has captivated my attention ever since — not because I am compelled to understand it, but rather because I cannot.
Even though I cannot understand it, I can still feel it — and it feels like a roller-coaster ride. When my feet are back on the ground, my engagement with infinity is an engagement with my own finiteness. My line can go only so far. My brushstroke can last only so long before it dies. Every action has to have a beginning, middle and end. My paintings, like my life, are finite within infinite surroundings.
In this process, I have arrived at a few approaches:
• I think of a painting not as scenes or pictures, but as a record, like a book or a musical score. As a result, the structure of my paintings is often a single Line that begins and ends on the canvas.
• The Lines consist of groups of parallel lines resembling barcodes. In Euclidean geometry, parallel lines are lines that never intersect, regardless of how far they extend.
• The Line is made up of segments, like paragraphs or parts of a sentence, with clear transitions from one to the next.
• I choose colors based on their vibration and impact on me, rather than on any reference to my visual environment. These colors are part of nature, but it’s a nature not limited to the Earth.
• Scaling up from small paintings to much larger ones provides an analogy to vaster scales and raises fractal geometry questions. What is the level of detail that I want to choose? I mine the seemingly microscopic details of my smaller paintings – as if they were nature itself – and try to reproduce them, a process that introduces new variations and accidents.
• My lines are an expression of my hand, body, nerves and heartbeat. Without the straight lines that would be provided by a ruler, waves and ripples appear and demand my engagement, linking my paintings conceptually to light, sound, gravitation, and the smallest scales of quantum fluctuations to the largest scales of cosmic structure.