21st century life is full of reminders that language and symbols have limitations. Words and visual vocabularies change constantly. Yet we still gravitate towards images we don’t fully grasp: pre-Columbian abstract symbology, Goya’s disguised meanings throughout “Los Caprichos”, or a viral meme that fades away from our memories as pop culture moves on. My work is inspired by images like these—works and ideas that carry lost histories and fragmented memory. I paint historical fiction as visual puzzles that acknowledge these moments as I believe past is prologue.
My process mimics my interests. Just as we have an incomplete understanding of the past, I restrict myself to drawing and oil painting from memory. I balance chance and order when composing and painting, and layer titles as a form of riddle to give me a sense of clarity. My work is meticulous yet prolific. I have more than 100 numbered notebooks filled with images I create, deface and organize for ongoing artworks.
In 2000 I began embedding my paintings with a symbolic language based on algebraic chess and music notations combined. The invented language mirrors the complexity of understanding language and symbols. It provides me a supplemental way to build imagery from memory when inventing specific human archetypes and handling lettering, language and symbols.
This site is under construction. Further work will be posted in November 2023.