Artist Statement
All of my work is in some way an homage to nature, even when a piece or grouping explores other themes or ideas. All of my paintings share this in common.

Since early childhood I have admired paintings and drawings that reflected a level of speed and confidence in their stroke or line. I developed a particular affinity to the work that came out of the commercial art world during a pre-digital time. The shapes and curves of the roman alphabet when painted or drawn for print, advertising, and signage share similarities to lines found in comic strip characters, old logos, ornamental designs and pinstriping. These various avenues of commercial art making share a common philosophy on what the qualifies a good shape or line. There is a dedication to training your motions to be regulated, continuous, even and fast, at the heart of finding grace in forms which also enables, and is enabled by, more physical methods of painting. Instead of just employing your elbow to fingertips, your whole body is synchronized to pull a strong line. All of your muscles work in unison to create motions with composure and the focused intention of a gymnast, skier or even a dancer.

In my abstract paintings, I use these classic forms to create environments of non-representational fields of color and shape. The process of painting this way encourages a peaceful and meditative state in me that I hope is translated to the experience of the viewer. Ideally, viewing a painting is an opportunity for the audience and myself to let go of life's baggage and allow oneself to be lost in this temporary escape.

Later I realized that shapes and lines of this abstract quality were everywhere in nature. Daydreaming one can see the subtleties of the sun gleaming through tree leaves or the shapes that form on water when it ripples, bubbles or crashes in lakes, oceans, and rivers. The layers of colors inside of flowers, and the swirls of red syrup in a strawberry milkshake, or the graceful arcs of a skier carving the even surface of a snowy mountain face, are all ambassadors of these natural enchantments that inspire my work. Observing nature helped to draw a strong connection for me between abstract work and shapes and colors that were all around me.

On the 3rd of August during a trip to the beach for my wife's birthday, psychedelic mushrooms enabled my perception of nature to crystallize. A storm was rolling in from the ocean during sunset. The storm spread towards me from the direction of the setting sun and I walked down the beach feeling the wind rushing, soaked by rain and watching the clouds moving fast around me. The world glowed intensely with each enhanced color of the setting sun. The image stuck in my head with a complete understanding of how to execute its translation into paint using the visual language of the abstract work I had already been exploring. With the image of the rainy beach at sunset already painted in my head, I realized that all of my early inspirations had the same root. Whether harnessing the human body's ability to find controlled ways of moving in order to create practiced shapes and lines or the perfection of forms already found in plants and animals in nature, the notion of perfect abstract shapes is everywhere in the natural world.

These realizations of the commonalities between the natural world and the abstract began with painting the beach and then carried over into other environments that exist on the edges, where people find escape.

An extension of my early abstract paintings is the painting series I call Presents. These pieces work within the same framework of color relationships, form, line and composition as the abstracts. The difference is that after the addition of a few layers of new elements, I mask off the entire outer edge of the painting using an even width of tape. This process is then repeated within the newly cropped area until the entire surface of the painting is covered completely with the masking tape. At this point there are only vague hints of what is waiting to be unwrapped.

Once unwrapped, the Present paintings provide a bi-product of tape left over from the masking process. I began to save the scraps somehow feeling mindful of the waste. Also considering the peeled up layers of acrylic paint from my paint trays, I began to mount them to the pages of sketchbooks. They remind me of less calculated versions of the paintings that they had created. This is an appeal that carries over and re-influences abstract work. This thinking led me to further consider my salvaged take from the preset paintings. I liked the way theP resents looked still wrapped, so it made sense to mimic their parallel lines with the tape, re-using it to construct new compositions on watercolor paper. It felt right to use all of the scraps- it reminded me of a story that a kid in elementary school told me. He came from a family of hunters who used the entire deer so as not to waste any part of the life that they had killed. This parallel seemed to exist in these new artworks.