Having grown up in the Western United States, I am permanently marked by a sense of place. I have a tireless need to be out in the land, moving. As I wander the American highways, I am drawn to scenery that is instilled with some faint murmur that speaks of isolation, emptiness, or the uncanny. The nation's vastness and the wanderlust it invites give way to popular notions of exploration and majesty. But I am haunted by how difficult it is to trigger a sense of wonder as I charge across a distance that grows greater each time, only to trace back through places that appear increasingly alike.
Each time I return from one of these long and circuitous drives, I am disquieted by the insatiable nature of distance. I must go further and further to give rise to rare experience. The bold memories that I do return with are soon clichéd by the destructive power of nostalgia, or the reality that no place is uncharted and unseen. It seems that the truly singular experiences left to be encountered are scarce.
My studio practice arrives out of an anxious need to permanently mark those rare, fleeting moments from "out there" with a language of personal signifiers—to keep what I have found. Through paint, I seek only to further distill and crystalize. I view my method as a crucible, purifying fading memories into objects that throb with aura, calling upon the difference between image and original experience.
I invoke the tradition of painting to frame an understanding of land that is both cinematic and transfixed. Like a painting, a chance encounter with the sublime exists in a still and weighty stasis, but also, in its brevity, is marked by the fugitive passing of time. By introducing romance to the ordinary, I intend to reshape my memories of the common American tableau into something radiant, numinous, and unknown.
