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Untitled

Charcoal on Paper, 3'x5'

This piece started as something entirely different.  I wanted to create a drawing of buried carpet.  It sounds strange.  Regardless it didn't work, so about halfway through I put a couch in it, and it became an overhead view.  I really like how it turned out.  It is one of my favorite pieces.  I felt I mastered a particular technique that is a focus for me.  I want to diverge realism with abstraction.  I know this is often classified as surrealism.  But I honestly don't think my work falls into that category.  This is a couch that was in our living room as a kid.  I played the hot lava game a lot as a kid.  Where you pretend the carpet is actually hot lava and if you touch it you die.  I think subconsciously that is where the rather chaotic carpet comes from.

Untitled

Charcoal on paper, 3.5'x6.5'

There are a few pieces between this one and the last that I didn't post.  There were a few months were I was a bit frustrated artistically.  I had gotten too nostalgic with the work I had been doing.  I still wanted to focus on childhood memories, but the work had gotten too personal.  I was encouraged to try drawing for a bit.  I discovered that I loved charcoal.  I was able to make choices and decisions immediately.  I did a few smaller drawings and paintings, and then this happened.  

   I had a general idea in the beginning.  It slowly started to take shape as I worked on it.  It is part of a hallway with carpet at the bottom that turns into water.  The chair is floating in the distance.  I'm not sure how obvious it is that the carpet turns into water, but I also don't think this matters too much. 

   This was a turning point.  I started to mix dreams and reality together.  I started to base my work on places from my childhood, but instead of focusing on a realistic interpretation I added emotional content from the time of the memory, and from the action of remembering the specific place.

Untitled

Oil on Canvas, 2'x6'

   This painting was the end/beginning.  At this point in time I had been creating my work with a certain amount of specifics.  I wanted the work to be a size that was relatable.  Some of my prior pieces were roughly the size of a door so that the viewer would feel like they were standing at a doorway.  Secondly I was doing collages under the paintings.  Sometime the pictures underneath had a particular connection, sometimes they did not.  Some of the images would show or be painted over entirely.  I particularly chose images that could be described as Americana.  Images of presidents, first ladies, propaganda, war images, etc.  I wanted the viewer to have something to relate to in the painting, otherwise my work would just be over realized nostalgia.  Third, the images I painted were all memories.

    This was one panel of a triptych.  Each piece was really skinny and tall.  I wanted the viewer to feel like they were peering into my paintings.  I never finished the other pieces.  I found that I was following a formula.  I was not connected to what I was creating.  I was over thinking my concept.

   This was supposed to be a spot in the orange orchards in the neighborhood I grew up in that got torn down a few years after my family and I left.  I often walked/ran through these orchards while my mother was in a coma.  One time I was walking through and walked into this area that was completely walled off by orange trees.  I like the solitude it presented.

Rosie the Riveter

Oil on Canvas, 4'x4'

    This is my first memory.  We moved from a farm in Iowa when I was 1.5 years of age.  I don't remember any of that.  This is the apartment I grew up in most of my life.  I lived there for 9 years.  I have this vague memory of being in the apartment when we were first moving in and there was nothing in it yet.  I remember sitting on the kitchen floor looking around at what would become my home.

    It was such a simple, boring memory.  I think that is kind of odd.  My first memory is not really of anything, but rather of a place.  My work has a lot to do with that connection between places and memory.  I believe they are very strongly tied.  I also find it interesting to think of places as having memory.

    On another note, my mother had a shirt with Rosie the Riveter on it.  One of my favorite shirts.  I love that image.

Civil Union

Oil on Canvas, 3.5'x6'

    This was my next painting in my childhood memories series.  I realized that I wanted to focus on landscapes of my childhood, both internal and external.  This is a view of the house I grew up in throughout elementary school.  I lived in this place the longest, so far.  My elementary school was a block away, and I walked to school everyday.  Sometimes my mom would walk with me.  There often seemed to be a haze, whether it was crows, or just the normal gray sky's of the Inland Empire.   It always came across a little ominous to me.

    Abraham Lincoln symbolizes many dichotomy's within our society.  As our society has it's dichotomy's so did my youth.  I understood from an early age that United States history is not what they teach you in elementary school.  Lincoln is a huge figurehead used throughout elementary to symbolize "everything that is good in the United States."  (take that how ever you want to)  He also had a very particular recognizable face.  I wanted the viewer to have something in the painting to automatically connect to, considering everything else about it is very personal.  I did not want to make a statement either.  His head is just placed in the painting, but there is nothing within in the painting itself to imply any particular feelings on my part.  That is for the viewer to decide.

Untitled

Oil on Canvas, 3'x6'

This painting, following the same theme of memories of my childhood, is my parents bedroom in the apartment I grew up in.  I believe it was also painted in 2004.  I have very particular memories of this room, and a lot of those were in late afternoon when the sun would hit both the windows leaving the room in a glow.  We had this particular shag carpeting that I have yet to recreate to my satisfaction.  I wanted this painting to be from my perspective as a kid, so I stretched out the room, and tried to have it at a viewpoint lower than an adults height.  This began my larger paintings. 

Untitled, Oil on Canvas, roughly 40"x60"

    I have finally started to upload my own images.  It has taken me a while, a mix of nervousness and not really having the time to.  So here it begins, my cataloging.  If you have any questions or comments, I would love them.

    This piece I did (I want to say) in 2004.  To be honest, I'm not sure.  I did this in college.  I had decided I wanted to deal with my mothers death.  It had been such a specific experience that changed my life in a variety of ways, it set off this chain of events that could be directly charted back to her death as a cause.  So, deciding that memory was a big issue for me as well as others I decided I wanted to use memories as a basis for my paintings.

    This is a key memory of my mother.  We were going shopping.  She cursed.  I had never seen her like this before.  My father was gone on a camping trip with my sister.  It was just the two of us.  I relished in these moments.  My mother was sick a lot of my childhood, so times like these were what I lived for.

    As I got older, and my memories of her started to disappear and fade, I realized that I didn't really know her.  I was 12 when she passed away, not quite old enough to view her as anything other than my mother.  This moment though has always stood out in my memories of her.  For those moments, she was not my mother, she was herself.  This is a recreation of that moment.  I used different photos to paint her face and mine.