Tell us a little about yourself:
I grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. After studying art at the St. Louis Community College at Florissant Valley, I transferred to the Kansas City Art Institute where I earned my BFA in Painting and Art History in 2006. That same year I moved to Chicago, and in 2008, I earned my MFA from the Department of Art Theory & Practice at Northwestern University.
What kinds of art do you create?
For the past few years, I have been making non-geometric abstractions. Though not a landscape painter in the traditional sense, erosion and sedimentation, growth and decay—geological and biological processes that help shape what we call landscape—greatly inform my work. In these natural processes—of increase and decrease, of transformation by repeated addition and subtraction—I find an analogue to the act of painting itself.
How did you get started?
This is a hard question to answer because, as strange as it may sound, I’ve always self-identified as an artist. Since before I can remember, making art was just what I did and I knew I was going to continue to do so.
How would you describe your artistic style?
My work is always changing, but a common feature is dense layers of minutely sized, seemingly random marks across an entire surface of a painting. To make these marks I often employ sticks in lieu of paintbrushes. This technique, along with embedding different materials like sand and iron filings into my paints, creates a highly textured surface that can often times feel more natural than human made; like a rock face or the surface of water. Layers of thin glazes and metallic and iridescent paints enhance these textures by catching and reflecting light. As you move around them, the appearance of the paintings change. My most recent work shimmers, and this shimmer obscures the image, making the paintings hard to see, hard to know.
