Painting
Viewfindings ◦ since 2021
After nearly two decades as a photographer, I’ve honed and sharpened a style that focuses on geometry and precision; everything in the frame is where it should be and nothing is extraneous. Even as the aesthetic has changed, the adherence to shape, form, and simplification has remained.
However, when you do something for long enough the things that define you can also begin to trap you. Your style becomes a crutch rather than something you push off from. You long for the early days of your practice when you tried things simply because you didn’t know any better; trying, failing, and experimenting purely for experimentation’s sake.
Oil painting has become an exercise in deprogramming these self-imposed rules, and a training mechanism for seeing the world fresh without the proxy of a camera lens. Each piece is a snapshot of a simple object seen during daily walks after the onset of motion aftereffect—a visual illusion of movement experienced after viewing moving visual stimuli for a time, and then fixating on something stationary.
While still highly photographic, these paintings are an opportunity to embrace spontaneity and improvisation. They are the artifacts of a process in stepping outside the lines that have for many years dictated the boundaries of my work.
Full collection of 14 pieces on display at 536 Davis St, San Francisco on May 12th from 4-7 PM as part of Problem Library’s [working] program reactivating vacant space to support artists and our city.
