Artist’s Statement

I paint because humans have always painted. Back in the caves, some poor bastard ground up dirt and ash and spit and slapped it on the wall. Why? To say, I was here. I saw a bison. I felt something. That was the whole story. And here I am, sixty-five thousand years later, still at it with better supplies and worse excuses, with better brushes, more colors, and far less chance of being eaten by something with big teeth. So it goes.

What I make is a jumble: Art Deco’s neat lines, surrealism’s fever dreams, cubism’s shattered puzzles. By rights, it should all collapse under its own weight. But after 12 rounds in the ring, the thing staggers upright. It even breathes. Light twitches. Light gleams. Angles fold in on themselves. And for a second, it almost looks like the universe makes sense like jazz—until it doesn’t.

Now my canvases hold all my lives at once: the chaotic boy, the psychedelic teenager, the father, the biologist, the man who climbed mountains and occasionally fell off ski slopes. My work remembers the past, interrogates the present, and quietly mocks the absurdity of trying to make sense of it all—which, in the end, is the only truly absurd thing worth doing. That’s my goal, really. To paint the mess honestly. To hold precision in one hand and chaos in the other. To build a dream that doesn’t behave, but still feels true. Like life, only flatter and easier to hang on a wall.