Experience for Experience's Sake

In my work, I am concerned with the direct aesthetic experience of a piece of art. I am a modern realist painter using traditional oil techniques with bold, often disruptive, color palettes. My subject matter is the quiet drama of life, the intense coiled energy and feeling of seemingly still moments. 

In our age where social media has dropped a veil of self consciousness over our lives, I believe an intense personal engagement with art is all the more vital. With the constant presence of cameras in our pockets and social media beckoning for posts, we are too often watching ourselves from the outside, sifting through our experiences for cropped, curated, “instagramable” moments. Distracted by our anticipation of other people’s experience of what we are seeing and doing, we reduce our ability to personally experience the world ourselves.

I invite the viewer into the private unselfconscious moment of the images in my paintings hoping to thereby give them their own private unselfconscious experience of the powerful relationship between a viewer and the art object being viewed. 

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