Continuum represents a flow from my past series, more specifically from my last series “Synthesis” – a transition that will evolve and meander organically in different directions. Whereas in the past I worked within a tight theme or subject, I intend to now approach the entire process in a looser fashion – letting the imagery lead me where it may while trusting my eye and my instincts to create a body of work that interrelates and sparks a visual dialogue.

In one sense I am approaching my subject as a formal study. Within that initial information is a glimpse of something I find intriguing, something transformative or otherworldly. My subject matter is often a fragment, a piece of something else. I take that piece and dissect it further, focusing only on a small portion – as if taking a piece of a puzzle and further dissecting that small part into even smaller fractions thereby creating something completely abstract, leaving the viewer with a sense that there is more to the picture beyond its borders. This is an idea that has always intrigued me. I have always been more interested in portions of a painting rather than the whole. Especially representative painting, it may be an incredible portrait by Sargent, but it is the detail in the background that begs my eye and steals my scrutiny. A swirl of the brush, a bit of whimsy, that suggests the artists’ hand, a small inkling of the mind behind the construction - that is what whets my whistle.

My paintings are simple objects with wide aspirations. By taking a quiet, dead thing, a remnant of the past, in this case a shell, unprepossessing, I am attempting to create life. I suggest a bit of the objects origin - in this case the ocean. The great vast mystery of the deep blue sea sparks ideas such as exotica, escape, cleansing and renewal, also danger and volatility. In “synthesis” I was working with a solid knotted limb of juniper - the resulting associations of dark musky woods were inherent. With both materials I am starting with a stationary object - essentially a still life, which I am attempting to transform into a landscape, more specifically an environment.
Although there is a reference to the objects natural place in the world there is also something else I am attempting to express. When I look at this thing – I see something, in fact I am looking intently for something, and even I am not sure what it is. But I usually know when I find it and that is when I decide to paint, and whether I capture it decides whether I am successful. As an artist, I am seeking that which cannot be put into words. So this “something” I am looking for, I can’t say exactly what it is, but perhaps I can tell you what it is not. It is not the ocean, not water, not a pretty picture or a symbol. It is more of a sense or a search, maybe a moment in life when I feel alive, myself, not mimetically, but actually. Sometimes a sense of detachment sets in and it takes something to reawaken me – a good thing, a bad thing, a little thing sparkling in the sunlight, a dark thing dank and smelly, a bit of passion, violent pain, a small hand. A moment. Seems like an enormity for a painting to aspire to – to be alive, to affect. I am attempting to awaken the senses through a small scrutiny of a displaced piece of the natural world, to create a man-made construct based on the natural processes of evolution, a singular universe oblivious to reality and yet irrevocably tied to it.