PAINTINGS
How do we know the things we think we know? In these days of declining baselines, when the world that sustains us is unraveling, this question takes on new importance. It is one that I ask with brushes, canvas, and paint. Instead of creating a literal narrative, I create visual poems that combine the scientific with the mythological. They aim to wear out the intellectual mind that tries to decipher the meaning. Once rational thought retires in exhaustion, we can explore worlds lost, with mysterious histories much stranger than we imagine.
This is a mythic American history told from the point of view of those who have been silenced. Included are the voices of humans, plants, and animals, communicated through waterways, bird migrations, prairie dog tunnels, and underground mycelial networks. Nineteenth century nature writers and landscape painters were concerned with celebrating beauty and conveying the sublime. Today we’re more interested in exploring natural processes and assessing humanity's relationship with nature.
These paintings are religious works for a religion that does not yet exist. They're painted elegies to the beauty that our world has lost. To make it through these times intact, we need to know that we live in a world of unlimited possibilities.