Artist Statement
I view my studio practice as a crappy laboratory - my work is one failed experiment leading to the next, the never-ending process always moving forward to attempt at the definition of material limits. I use it until it breaks, I fix it, and use it again. My process is a consistent pattern of formulating hypotheses and being surprised by the outcome. The constantly changing materials, color palette, and environment, are the variables of my studio which push my experiment beyond my original intentions. These variables are in a state of perpetual change, which leads to the inconsistencies on which my practice thrives. I clearly do not understand the workings of a successful lab, and I do not intend to uncover these best practices; however, I refer to my studio as a lab loosely, to describe my use of materials and my need to investigate visual curiosities.
There’s a dichotomous relationship between comfort and unease, each playing tug-of-war with the other, in each of my pieces. In my preference of using commonly domestic building materials and manipulating them into forms both repelling and recognizable, I’m examining color intensification to a fault, messiness, and the abject. The chaos and instability inherent in contemporary life that’s reaped from our never-satiated desire for comfort exists in the simultaneously fragile and ugly forms. What comes out of my work and my studio I don’t believe to be objects, but instead are material paintings as images of the excess.
