* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
My work investigates the evolving relationship between humans and the landscape. We live in an era of shifting cultural consciousness regarding the place and power of humans in the world. This conceptual shift affects us spiritually, socially, and economically. This relational evolution is a central theme in my latest work. Informed by air travel, virtual travel over the Internet, maps, modeling and real-world experience, our notion of the landscape is collapsed, our sense of scale altered. In my paintings and through my research I re-consider specific landscapes as models, easily controlled and toyed with.
The subject matter of this current body of work is surface mining. Mines serve as a visual metaphor for our simultaneous ownership over and dependence on the land. The function of these landscapes is twofold: they exist both as sites of commodified nature and as the beautiful archeological relics they will become. The pre-existing topography of the land dictates a direction to the extraction process. The tracks left by the absent figure in pursuit of power and progress reveal the elegant geometry unique to our species. The resultant landscape is a meeting of the slow accumulation of matter over millenia, and the precise, efficient excavation by man-made machines.
