A Change of Scenery

Much of my body of work has been influenced by my life growing up in Los Angeles in a mid-century modern house, curated with meticulously stylish furniture and books. Over the years of being surrounded by this "California cool" aesthetic, I learned to draw inspiration for my own work from it. My creative voice as an artist grew stronger by reflecting what I was living in and interacting with in my daily. 

However, and perhaps more crucially, that same artistic voice grew just as strong with my ability to escape these surroundings. My eventual love of the Los Angeles modern style came only after years of my own 

resistance to it. For much of my life I wanted to live in a traditional house with a white picket fence where I would have to shovel snow from the drive and everyday after school I climb the stairs to get to my own imagined room of traditional "normalcy". 

There was a colonial style house my family would drive by ritually every Sunday that seemed like the very house I dreamed come to life. At home, I would draw that house every day and with each drawing I learned the power that art has to transport me to a world other than my own. 

And now when I wish to see the colors change with the season, feel the cool breeze of a cape side town, or listen to the silence of a sprawling desert plane I paint the scene to transport me there. 

A Change of Scenery is a series of my own, deeply longed for getaways.

SOLITARY SHADOWS

Alleyways at night time might not be where one would voluntarily stroll through to find beauty, but for the past year that was the only place where I found it. Los Angeles is a patchwork of crowded neighborhoods, rising and falling terrain, and an endless web of intertwining freeways. But in the alleyways throughout the city I have found an unpretentious world of solitary shadows, quiet scenes, and secret lives hidden amongst the busy boulevards that surround them. The shadows cast from blue fluorescent and ochre iridescent bulbs stuck to nondescript walls like abstract paintings on canvas. Often quiet and still the mood felt tense, reminiscent of a film noir. 

With this series the most important element for me to create was the mood for each piece; to not only transport the viewer to where I was but to share with them the feeling I felt along my exploration. The tension between light and dark in my pieces is essential for orchestrating that quiet, reflective mood. I attempt to build a world on canvas as real as possible while giving as little information as I can letting certain details hide in shadows and transform whole houses and trees into simplified silhouettes. 

Fine Line

Fine Line is my new experimental series that visually manipulates landscapes, presenting them as surreal and graphic works of art. I do so by starting with a scene on a simple horizon line and cut it into different parts, each exploring the scene at different times of day, different subject matters, and done so with different styles of painting. 

This series was inspired by the juxtaposition of the way my surroundings are presented to me via reality and the way I choose to see my surroundings within my own imagination. While my series Solitary Shadows is grounded in reality and explores the way something so ordinary can become cinematic when given its own platform to be observed and admired, Fine Line is about asking and answering the question “what if…?” Small and purposeful changes that create different narratives within each viewer. The stories we come up within our minds are often times more fascinating and true than what reality can give us, because we are responsible for filling in the blanks. My work is just a vehicle to spark the imagination of the viewers, to present thought-provoking images os a world so similar yet different from our own. 

The composition of the pieces were inspired loosely by Mondiran’s graphic paintings. He expertly balanced line and color in his work, and in mine I strove to create the same balance. moving the viewers eyes across the piece while also separating the composition into individual visuals that come together to tell a larger story. 

Their Home

When I was 10 years old my family called the police thinking they heard a burglar walking on the roof. It turned out to be a rather large raccoon. On another day we pulled up to our house to find a 6 ft long snake sunbathing in our driveway. One Halloween a small pack of coyotes followed us on our slow trek throughout the neighborhood. And for a couple of weeks in the springtime two ducks paddled in our pool more than we probably did for the whole year. 

With this series I wanted to create a whimsical tribute to all of the animals who have come to visit throughout the years by making my home theirs. The house I grew up in is a 59-year-old mid-century modern house. It has floor to ceiling windows and rooms with minimal walls that gives you the feeling of being in a wide open space. This is why I have chosen to omit painting floors or ceilings in my pieces and instead let objects such as furniture, rugs, and cars build the environment instead. The brightly colored backgrounds of the paintings are specifically chosen from the colors that exist throughout my home. The juxtaposition of the animals interacting with the design of the house is a playful tension between man and nature and how we share this world (and sometimes our home) with one another.