2023-2024

During the pandemic, I worked on a series of narrative paintings that reflected a sense of isolation and an attempt to reengage again with the world. In Table Setting (2023), I felt I finally reached a point where the non-representational elements seemed to open up a way of working more abstractly. A central aspect of the previous work—the breaking apart of space—seemed better suited to dealing with myriad shapes of color. As a result, I began to use an improvisational approach to abstraction and abstract painting in general, which somehow felt more liberating. I started a series of 24” x 20” oil paintings on canvas without having a preconceived idea, using a limited palette and a combination of shapes and lines to explore pictorial space. The subject of the work becomes the process of painting itself. I attempt to allow the paintings to reveal the manner of their making through layering and a searching but deliberate form of paint application. The result is a painting, which I hope conveys a dynamic visual record of the struggle of the process of creating a work as it finds its way toward some final resolution.