"Restoration"

This series developed while working on the previous series, "The Escape”.

I wanted to create a mini series that featured large shifting landscapes on a smaller scale while playing with shapes and colors. So I stretched a few canvases, applied a few layers of clear gesso, and let them sit on the shelf in my studio.

After many sketches of various compositions and color trials, I was ready to apply my first ink layers to the canvas. The ink was mixed to my desired tones, opacities, etc, then applied through swift, practiced, and intentional brush marks. By choosing a calming, meditative process, subject matter, and color palette, I created these pieces to induce a quiet moment of relief and restoration.

Creating this work allowed me to slow down and react to the marks as they were applied to the canvas. While still remembering my desired outcome, like a choreographed ritual captured in one final performance on the canvas. Letting my muscle memory take over and quieting my mind.

In fast times we often forget to slow down and breathe, to step outside ourselves. This work is a reaction to chaotic times rather than an example of the times. A necessary grounding aid to the constant shifting and evolving that is always taking place.

Series available to subscribers Wednesday, March 1st 2021 and to the public Thursday, March 2nd 2021.

Amazon Mini-Series

Since May, I have been working on this series' drawings, and I have enjoyed the way they have developed. After trimming some leftover scraps from my studio, I decided to make a series of drawings as an ode to moments of life in the Amazon Rainforest. I have always felt attracted to the Amazon Rainforest; there is so much about it that is magical. The sheer size of it, the species that inhabit it, the indigenous tribes that still live traditionally within it, the medicine that develops from it, the fact that it serves places around the world in so many different ways. It is pretty incredible.

This concept has been developing for some time now. Over the years, seeing how much of the Amazon we have lost to over logging, overdevelopment, and now extreme fires, it was hard to ignore. It was first a personal project that later evolved into a conversation with others as I began to create and share the drawings.

It is hard to wrap our heads around the actual amount of damage that is going on, and it is also hard to wrap our heads around how it could affect us personally, so I just wanted to focus on little elements of beauty within the habitat.

The Amazon Mini-Series is just about admiring the Amazon rainforest's details, little moments of something so grand and incredible.

For this series, I am teaming up with artist Nick Vermeulen from The Netherlands to sell some art inspired by The Amazon and the natural world. The series will be released to the public on World Habitat Day, Saturday, 10-3-2020, and 25% of the profit will go towards The Amazon Conservation Association.

To get first access on Friday, be sure to subscribe here!

A Fragile Existence: A Solo Exhibition

This solo show with (9) The Gallery was planned from early summer last year. I was looking forward to having my first solo show and with such a cool gallery. When January came around it started to look less and less like it was going to happen at all, due to the spread of the virus. 

Considering I had been working on developing this series of artwork for the better part of 9 months, I decided to keep going anyway. If there was no show, there was no show. I wanted to keep developing the artworks and follow them wherever they were going, even without an event to prepare for. Luckily, (9) The Gallery was prepared and willing to go virtual, so now we are back in the swing.

Working on the series

Working on this series was a very interesting process to go through. As the pieces developed, I kept feeling a sense of nostalgia for life, for the moments I was experiencing at that exact time, and even for the moments that I had yet to experience.

While creating the images out of very thin washes of ink and charcoal, I felt intentionality with the layers. I wanted to focus on slowing down the simple, quick moments, and cherishing them.

The Name

One phrase kept popping up in my head as I continued developing through the series, “ A Fragile Existence.”

Leading up to this show, I was inspired by the passing of time, fleeting moments and human fragility in my own personal experience, and by the time I had finished this series, I was witnessing it on a global scale.

The past few of months, have made it more clear. With this pandemic, we are experiencing fragility in a very palpable way for the human race as a whole.

There are moments of sadness and anxiety, yet I feel the appreciation of the intricate life that we have here on Earth. I think of how lucky we are to have this grand display of nature around us and how we can interact with it and each other in countless ways.

This series is to further the conversation of our physical, human experience on this planet together, and slowing down the simple, quick moments to appreciate and savor what is before us.

This series is currently for sale on:

(9) The Gallery

Artsy.net

If you want to dive deeper, you can watch my interview with (9) The Gallery about the work here.

I hope you are all well and healthy!