* All images used with permission. Please do not distribute without first contacting the artist.
I am primarily a painter, but I also make sculptures and installations with everyday craft, party, and home improvement materials. For the past couple of years, I have taken the basic concept of Utopia as the perfect faraway island, and developed an idiosyncratic language to be more specific about how and what I want to communicate. This has also allowed me to expand my ideas and now I find each piece opens me to more and more nuanced explorations of manmade fantasies in both the real and digital world. Until recently I have been painting ambiguous landscapes of utopian islands that are in a constant state of forming and imploding on itself. However, my newest work explores more specific ideas of utopia as it directly relates to our search and attempt at perfection in cities, parks, vacation destinations, and digital landscapes. These paintings act as metaphors for our simulations of natural habitats, social structures, and consumerist environments. Within the fantasy lies a gray area of cultural seduction and exploitation where I can explore my desire, repulsion and contribution to it.
