I paint because of the excitement of exploring the unknown, the challenge of balancing order with chaos, and the satisfaction in finding such harmony that it creates an image uniquely human. My goal is to map these thought processes in order to create my personal visual language that aspires to be deciphered by the viewer.

Decision-making in the past has dealt mainly with my desire to explore lush layers of random line and color. The length, hue, and depth of the lines were sometimes arbitrary and sometimes determined by chance, with dice rolls and coin flips. Formulas and flow charts were also used to randomly plot mutations and their extent within the confines of each grid square. In order to execute such decisions, oil paint has always been the primary medium. Its flexibility is most helpful since I am often unsure of what is coming next. A roll of the dice could have me blending colors on the canvas at a moment’s notice. The technique of choosing color and form based on chance is intended to mimic the natural world, where not everything can be predicted. There always exists a random variable in the formula of a non-conforming mother nature; I am attempting to coordinate acts of God. In order to accentuate this, my subject matter has always been an unremarkable scene, a single-subject portrait, or an everyday occurrence. This ordinariness contrasts with the chaos that surrounds us at every moment and emphasizes how we (I, the painter, and/or the subject of the painting) are completely unaware of, ignoring, fighting, or giving in to this chaos. The theme of the grid is a direct response to this disorder and an individual’s need to keep it in check or to capture it as if in a net. As philosopher and writer Alan Watts describes it in The Book (on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are), “the net has thus become one of the presiding images of human thought.” It divides the overwhelming bigger picture into smaller, contained images of equal size and in doing so, “order has been imposed on chaos”. Hence, my paintings become this constant battle of trying to quell natural disorder by beating the system or recreating it on my own terms.

As time passed, I realized that working in such a manner was making the act of painting exhausting while producing a rather lifeless, robotic image. In order to move forward I had to let the levee break and rethink my idea of man vs. nature. Recently, my painting has started to incorporate chaos by allowing it to intertwine with daily existence. Randomness is portrayed through collage, words, and simple drawings pulled from the everyday. The grid has become a calendar; my composition is a subconscious cartography of thought processes and invented narratives. I plan to continue to explore the coexistence of chaos, order, and humanness. The challenge is to have this new arrangement sustain itself to the point where painting is not a stunted, control-ridden endeavor but a completely organic process that supports itself through the act of living.