Work > Writing

You have a few different bodies of work; can you take us through the transitions between those series from one focus to another? Is it gradual and then you categorize them later, or do you actively plan to start a new series?

I paint things that feel right to me. I started painting and I was like, well I liked doing that, so I found something similar and built off that. It is more of a gradual progression. When I first started I just I really liked working with people and painting people and portraits. What was important to me was those subtle glances, those subtle gestures and awkwardness. With people, there is so much in facial expressions. I would explore what that meant to me: Do I see myself in these pictures? I worked with bright colors and vibrancy. In that it was gradual. But then as soon as the pandemic hit, there was a sudden switch. It was just like everything I was painting just started going dark. The colors I was using started to go more realistic than bright and neon. I think it was a reflection on the time and how I was feeling at that moment of when I was painting it. I don't think that I could go back to painting bright right now. I am working more outside because that fresh air is important to me now. It is about what I'm feeling.

Last year your studio changed spaces and you were already thinking about memories and family before that happened. Did that adjustment make you think differently or reinforce those ideas?

When I was at school I was away from home, I wasn't around my family. It was nostalgic, a little bit of homesick. Then I got home, and I was suddenly surrounded by everybody that I was painting. I had references that I didn't have before. I was taking photos around my house of things that always meant something to me but means nothing to anybody. I was questioning why I cared about these things and what it was that made me drawn to them. That feeling, it is almost more feeling trapped in a way. I was branching myself out and suddenly I was back home, and I was back in my familiar space, but I wanted to be out again. It was just like a constant like tug and pull within myself of what I wanted.

It was an identity crisis in a way. I was trying to be my own person, but there was this tug of war of going back to who I used to be. Being a kid again, being under that roof. I've been seeing that in my paintings because a lot of them I would paint myself as a child, really small. I felt like that in a way. The way my expressions are in those paintings, they're very plain. They're cold and staring, and that is how I've been feeling.

You are expecting to move again in the near future. Do you think that will change your work again as well?

The space plays a role in what I'm doing. I'm working in my parents' basement right now. I don't have the area to work big. That's another thing that really changed for me was my size of my paintings. I was working 4 feet by 4 feet or larger on canvas and now my standard sizes are 9 inch by 12 inch or 11 inch by 14 inches. It just shrunk. If I were to move and set up my own space, that will change again. It depends on how I'm feeling and I'm in the basement, it's kind of dark down here. A lot of my paintings got darker. While at school, I was in the bright light, so I was painting with bright colors.

That’s like what we were talking about earlier with you working outside?

It is. And I do notice that my paintings are a lot happier. Material has a lot to do with that too. I usually work on wood panel, and I've moved on to kind of experimenting with yuppo. When you paint on that, the colors that you use become more transparent. White shows through in the back.

And you've worked with a range of materials to canvas, paper, yuppo, and evalon as well. How do you find all those different materials?

Trial and error. I hear about something from reading or school or teaching and I get curious. We'll see how it goes. I'll try something if I don't like it, that's how it is. I do try to push myself to branch out. Every material has its challenges. Figuring those out and how to work with it, it's kind of exciting.

Can you take me through your process from starting to sketching and then onward from there?

I do a lot of researching and searching through old family photographs. That is one of my main sources of reference. I will pick out ones that are interesting; that are a little weird. I'll usually sketch the photograph in my notebook. It's a loose sketch to get the idea, get some shapes, get some shadows to see like, oh, this is what I want here. I jot down notes of what I'm thinking about. From there I'll make my paintings from my sketchbook and not the reference photo. I try to get that one step further from the original source. So, arms get a little long, faces get a little squat, things change. It still looks like people, but there's something a little bit off about it. That’s what I like. Lately I've been painting with more local colors, so I have been referencing the original photograph so I can get some of those colors back. Originally, I was completely making things up and color straight out of the tube, going with how I feel. I think they both have interesting qualities. It just brings back that different mood into the painting, depending on what I’m doing.

I guess that changes depending on where that image is leading you and what that series is asking of you.

Yeah, yeah.

There's a mix of straightforwardness and slight irony in your titles. There's the one you were just showing me, it's called “Life of the Party.” It’s a great painting to begin with, and the title is a little bit funny. Do you come up with them beforehand or once you're finished? And what are some of your favorite names for your paintings?

That was one I was just thinking about as I was painting it, but I always name it afterwards. I was thinking about how ironic it is because it is this picture of this girl sitting at a table and she looks miserable in her party hat. She just like looks like she doesn't want to be there. So, I'm like, oh, she's the life of the party. Like you said, it’s irony I was striving for in that one. There's one with a little kid and a woman standing behind her. There's nothing really going on, but again, it's that straight face staring out at the viewer and on the side there's this bright color beach towel. I really liked that beach towel. So I named it “beach towel”. Even though the beach towel in the painting is such a little thing. But I’m just so drawn to it, so I named it after that. Another ironic one: it's two girls just staring, looking out, not amused at all with a figure behind them and it's called “amusement park kids.”

I know David Park is an influence of yours. What other artists do you look up to, either technically or conceptually?

I've been looking into Richard Diebenkorn too. His mark making is like David Park. Doron Langberg had a big impact on me and his use of color, spontaneous brushstrokes, and the layering that he uses. I really like Christy Powers and she is an artist that has been working on yuppo. She has been working with iconic figures. But her brushstroke has been really interesting to me. And similar things that I'm kind of exploring on yuppo. In that lightness you can see how she's making her shapes, which I think is interesting.

There's this podcast that I listen to called TalkArt with Russell Tovey and Robert Diament, I think they're great. So, I’m going to ask you my favorite question that they ask everyone they interview: if you could pick one artwork, you could steal it from a museum, you could take it from a private collection, it could be something that's already destroyed, what artwork would you want?

Well, not to be a cliche, but I would actually pick Vincent van Gogh, “Starry Night.” That was the first real time that I was at a museum and experiencing it for the first time. I remember, I was talking to my art teacher, and I was just like, it's really cool, and he was like hey you see the one behind you and he turned me around and it was right there in my face, and I was like "Oh my God." That was, the first moment for me that I was like "I want to be an artist. I wanted to make something that beautiful."