When I first discovered the idea of a painting as a window, I wondered what existed beyond the window frame. Did the picture extend in all directions? If so, how far? By cropping a view of something larger, the window suggested an infinite landscape. That landscape has captivated my attention ever since — not because I’m compelled to understand it, but because I cannot.
In my art practice, engaging with infinity means engaging with my own finiteness. My line can go only so far, my brushstrokes can last only so long before they die. I’m inspired by the finiteness of writing and music – specifically, the beginning-middle-end structure and sequences of moments. I’m also inspired by the writings of Lucretius, who rejects the notion of a center or edge to the cosmos and sees life as a fleeting moment within a boundless continuum of time.
In this process of engaging with the infinite landscape and the “why is there anything?” question, I’ve arrived at the following:
I think of a painting as a record, like writing or a musical score. Their structure is often a single path or line that “continues” off the canvas; or else it’s a set of layers, like chapters, that shows a history culminating in the present.
My brushstrokes are sets of parallel lines like barcodes. In Euclidean geometry, parallel lines are lines that never intersect, even at infinity. Why I am drawn to them is still mysterious to me, but it probably has something to do with the complete directional freedom of the line as a whole as well as the rigid internal laws of its parallel components.
The brushstrokes are segments – like sentences or paragraphs – because the brush runs out of paint — thus raising real-world questions about transitions in space and time.
When I scale up from small to large, the edges take on the complexity of fractal coastlines, so I’m forced to choose a level of detail that falls within the limits of my skill and materials.
See other Statements for each body of work.