Series Statement:
Alt-Scape (2018-2015)
This series of paintings and prints were inspired by my childhood experiences with the surrounding rural landscape, its history and related concerns of climate change and environmental degradation. Nature or “the land” is commonly regarded as property, a commodity to be used/utilized by people and coveted by those who do not own a piece of it. Even when set aside for protection, it is fragmented from the original whole and broken from an environmental perspective. The land as both a physical place/space and as a idea/concept is a reflection of our actions and attitudes towards it and each other as people-individually and as part of a larger community.
These works represent nature (”the land”) in a reflexive state, as an unnatural, lack-luster substitute from its original form and, in my interpretation through this series of paintings and prints, exists as a symbolically displaced environmental artifact. Furthermore, these paintings were created with the intention of inverting the depiction of nature as a romanticized, idealized place by a means of “replacement,” creating abstract compositions that emphasized fragmented form and dissonant color relationships. The paintings were born out from photographs of rural areas in and around fields, creeks and woods from my childhoood home and altered through a digital photo program and then projected onto the canvasses. The projected images were then painted in overlapping layers with other images and intuitively painted forms in order to further reconfigure the whole composition.
Alt-Scape (2018-2015)
This series of paintings and prints were inspired by my childhood experiences with the surrounding rural landscape, its history and related concerns of climate change and environmental degradation. Nature or “the land” is commonly regarded as property, a commodity to be used/utilized by people and coveted by those who do not own a piece of it. Even when set aside for protection, it is fragmented from the original whole and broken from an environmental perspective. The land as both a physical place/space and as a idea/concept is a reflection of our actions and attitudes towards it and each other as people-individually and as part of a larger community.
These works represent nature (”the land”) in a reflexive state, as an unnatural, lack-luster substitute from its original form and, in my interpretation through this series of paintings and prints, exists as a symbolically displaced environmental artifact. Furthermore, these paintings were created with the intention of inverting the depiction of nature as a romanticized, idealized place by a means of “replacement,” creating abstract compositions that emphasized fragmented form and dissonant color relationships. The paintings were born out from photographs of rural areas in and around fields, creeks and woods from my childhoood home and altered through a digital photo program and then projected onto the canvasses. The projected images were then painted in overlapping layers with other images and intuitively painted forms in order to further reconfigure the whole composition.