Artist Statement
The horses that I paint are working. They are straining under tension. Horses have been used as symbols of freedom and accessories to power throughout art history, yet they are also just horses. They are prey animals and beasts of burden, unaware of the history they carried on their backs.
I grew up with horses in Wisconsin and worked with them as a wrangler in Yellowstone National Park. They were fellow laborers, coworkers, and friends. I am intimately familiar with their contradictions as a symbol versus their reality.
I use horses to represent the complex tensions that are omnipresent in life and America today. This world feels pressurized and my paintings illustrate that, to act, in a way, as a record of our current moment– a moment marked by the struggle over the ephemeral and material, the artificial and authentic.
I crop, mirror, and fragment the horses, as a nod to art historical references and a way to further control the image. I juxtapose them with landscapes from the America I grew up in, which were filled with vacant parking lots, empty strip malls, and defunct department stores.
The world in these paintings is one of delirium, an “in-between” state, removed slightly from our reality. And this mirrored world is red.
