My paintings are an attempt to marry a sense of light and color with a feeling for gravity and weight. I want a down-to-earth Fauvism. There is no reliance on chiaroscuro. I work from direct observation in my studio. It is my hope to tame, but not destroy, the exhilaration of color that I find in neutral color areas, such as shadows, cardboard, walls, and metal filing cabinets. The subjects, the views that I paint, are primarily ‘discovered’ while spending time in the studio working. The space is mainly painted as I find it, with little to no editing or composing of the objects. I want a sense of ‘Thereness’ with the objects and planes that I paint; I want everything to sit in space. Each painting is a meditation on both the setup and the painting, and hopefully the feelings and excitement of various felt moments in each work will translate to a sympathetic viewer. Given the way that I make a painting, the final expression may be that of a personal anxiety.
The works are all painted directly from life in my studio. The paintings do not strive to relate to life outside of the studio. They do not represent, directly, me as a person. Nothing in the painting is meant to be understood in a literary, symbolic, or (intentionally) metaphorical sense.
The paintings are about a particular feeling for light, space, and color. The work is begun with an excitement for the light in the studio, a strong sunny day filtered through the skylight and the green trees outside the windows. The color in the painting aims to be expressive of strong fauvist-like colors that I sense as I look, yet the colors are mixed down so as to hopefully express both the color and the weighted planes of the room and the objects. It is my desire that a viewer would spend time with the work so as to experience the color which has been muted and suppressed. I want a weighted Fauvism with the work. A convincing sense of gravity and space creates a feeling of compression in the paintings. The gravity and compression attempt to justify the impressionistic blush of color and light.
