My interest in painting’s capacity to represent subjective experiences is the foundation of my studio practice. My current work in painting is grounded in the following questions: How is space experienced subjectively, and how are these experiences reconstructed in our memories? How might time’s passage be expressed in the static frame of a painting? Finally, what role might painting have to play in addressing the environmental urgencies of the present moment? With these in mind, I use the medium to mine the poetics of small gestures and encounters in daily life.
My current project stems from a recent experience in a local forest. On a cold autumn evening, surrounded by trees and off trail, I was without a reliable map and unsure of the path toward my destination. With sunlight growing dimmer and a dark blue haze cast over the forest, sounds I’m used to hearing—rustling leaves and cracking branches on the forest floor—found a new, more anxious tenor. In these circumstances, my ordinary surroundings took on an otherworldly tone. This feeling is encapsulated by a French expression for twilight, “entre chien et loup.” Translating as “between dog and wolf,” it denotes a time when lighting conditions are such that one can’t distinguish between a dog and a wolf—between what is familiar and unfamiliar, real and unreal, safe or threatening. The local environment, once familiar, suddenly turned mysterious, oneiric.
