artist statement

I spent the morning re-measuring painted canvases to order stretcher bars, paint and another gallon of linseed oil. I use a lot of linseed oil. My latest incarnation has found me utilizing the desert sun to bake my oil paintings. I still paint in the traditional manner of lean-to-fat, but I bake the works, outside, between the painting/glazing of layers. By still painting in innumerable layers, I avoid the hazards of future peeling/breakage of the painted surfaces. However, by over-clocking my ratio of linseed oil and then draining it, from under the shell, after a baking session; I am able to build thicker layers of paint until the surface attains an almost fibrous texture/existence.

Through these works and many past series, I consider myself a representational abstract expressionist.  While I respect the work of previous and present pure abstractionists, I know in my own paintings that totally non-representational work is an unnatural act. When painting, I rely heavily on the places I’ve been. The lives I have been allowed to share. The emotions that have been stirred and kindled in my own mind – I see these images at all times, and repressing them for the sake of fashion is beyond my control. Even my most abstracted works are shrouded in the mystery of imagery.

Drawing with the full length of my body, I create a free-flowing composition that continues to exist outside the barrier of the visual surface. In hundreds of layers, I build paintings on wood and canvas with brayers, sticks and brushes. The works I exhibit are simply the intimate sections of a greater arrangement.

I am a painter of deep maps. A deep map goes beyond simple landscape/history-based topography. It interweaves autobiography, archeology, stories, memories, folklore, traces, reportage, weather, interviews, natural science, and intuition. Specifically, I am interested in tracing the birth of North American civilization to the heart of modern exploitation. Utilizing multiple perspectives, I build compositions that explore the land and its influence over our subconscious.
In its best form, a finished painting arrives at a subtle, multi-layered and 'deep' map of a small area of the continent.
- North