ARTIST STATEMENT
My works are deliberately non-partisan, non-didactic, and neutral critiques of the landscapes and lifestyles that modern American-style capitalism created and dominated not only the US, but an increasingly larger swath of the globe. Many of my works are heavily edited collages that seek to represent the most contemporary ideal of landscape, setting, place, or action. I pay particularly close attention to how discreet and lopsided power structures give rise to the increasingly uniform topography that we see in our world today. The modern landscape is always the result of political, economic, and social forces, but this is usually implicit. I prefer to suggest rather than state things explicitly. My practice also includes the psychological mechanisms of recollection and the way that shapes, colors, and textures interact to engender memories and emotions. My process enables me to create my work in a similar way to how we form a mental image, constructing it with selective fragments from our experience and imagination. I enjoy the ability to create my own pictures without having to depend entirely on what ready-made scene I can find.
As an artist interested in the transforming landscapes of industry, workplace, labor, leisure, and their relationship to nature, I find photography to be the best medium to convey my ideas because its form requires deliberate observation. In all my work, I attempt to approach my subject through its impact on the landscape, and the ways in which it is written on the environment through land use and architecture. History works similarly to a hard disk that is in a constant state of reading and rewriting, and I'm interested in the ways in which this is expressed on the topography of the land. I’m equally fascinated by the ways in which the natural landscape eventually reclaims its history over time. I attempt to address the way that spaces function, not only on an aesthetic level, but also a conceptual one.
My works are intended to be uncannily beautiful so the viewer is visually seduced before being confronted with darker and more complex themes. My goal is to activate the viewer rather than explain. Once they’re lulled into a state of aesthetic pleasure and subsequently realize that it’s also derived from a landscape of human suffering, there’s potential for the viewer to be offended not just by my work but also with themselves, which can ignite active viewer participation that critically engages with my work and its subject matter, deconstructing the power structures behind the surface topography initiated by the simple act of viewing.
Frequently referencing art history, my work draws influence from the New Topographics members, students under (and including) the Bechers of the Düsseldorf School, and photographers of the American color film and large format camera revival. As an obsessive monograph collector, my work finds inspiration from countless artists and photographers, from Alfred Stieglitz to Albert Renger-Patzsch to Victoria Sambunaris. Literary, documentary, and cinematic influences from the likes of Charles Dickens, Errol Morris, and Todd Solondz, the perspectives of Giorgio de Chirico, the psychosocial drama of Edward Hopper, the sublime of Caspar David Friedrich, and the color theories of Josef Albers and color field painters also seep into my work.