I paint to learn: I am Autistic and my art reflects that. Life can be overwhelming and when I feel a big emotion, or am confused by the human interactions surrounding me, I snap a photo. I spend time painting from that photo, working through composition, color, line, but also story, emotion, history, intentions, human purpose. The final piece is what I learned about artistic process, myself and the world around me through prayer, introspection and deliberate emotional examination. I combine layers of subtraction and thicker additive layers of oil paint for intriguing depth and glowing light. These characteristics symbolize those in my subjects.
My work studies the relationship between environment and emotion with use of light, shadow and color to discover the stories within my subjects. I am constantly overwhelmed by the beauty of everyday life and when trying to communicate this in my art, it seems an almost insurmountable problem. I explore depictions of all the places into which we try to fit ourselves: into a talent, a career, a gender, a religion, a relationship, a diagnosis. None alone can contain all of the extraordinarily complex beauty of a human life. This conflict fascinates me and solving the problems of fitting every beautiful thing onto a single canvas is what brings me back to my studio daily. My oil paintings on canvas showcase layers of vibrant color in a dreamy compound of contemporary realism, impressionism and storytelling.
My ‘&’ series is a response to my own journey with Aloneness throughout my life and in my previous series, ‘Wilderness.’ It is an answer to, a longing for and an obsession with finding this & in my life, a disruption of singularity and loneliness. This series uses compositional elements including the human figure, the glorious light and color of landscapes, and architectural structure to tell stories of human relationships. This series is a song of praise for the ways God brings us together. They are ALL holy.