Portals of Discovery
My large-scale paintings currently investigate the changing, contemporary experience of the sublime, specificallly, the layers through which we now view landscape. Our immediate experience of the sublime is filtered through windows and lenses as we seek the postable digital image. My source material for these paintings are photographs that I have taken on trips, over the last four years, with my phone camera through the window of a moving car, bus, or train. The imagery in my work is familiar yet dislocating. The huge size of the work and the reflections from the windows and camera lens help create a space the viewer can enter. Landscape is passing yet freezing in motion.
I use spray, acrylic and oil paint on canvas. I use spray paint and acrylic paint to build layers quickly without the drying time of oil paint. I switch to oil paint for the final layers and translucent forms. I also work and drip paint from two different directions by turning the paintings to create layers and space. I drip with both acrylic and oil paint because of their individual characteristics. The vertical drips give a sense of motion and a blurring of forms one experiences when driving through the country. Everyone has experienced the feeling of endless landscape whipping by, through a moving window, on a road trip and each has his or her own history, memories and reflections. I want the viewer to take a moment of reflection and a new experience of this reality.