I consider these paintings to be meditations. Their repetition creates a lack of a focal point which encourages the viewer’s mind to wander. They may begin to consider the minute variations in each repeated image. They may create stories about certain groupings of images. Ultimately the viewer will hopefully be thinking about nothing, lost in the composition and calmed by the painting as a whole.
I seek out iconographic images to which we all relate, while specifically avoiding pop art. I prefer images that exist within the collective unconscious, not through marketing, but rather through shared existential experiences. Rusty bikes, beautiful girls, beer, cigarettes, ice cream trucks, oysters, beloved animals… images which evoke youthful carelessness, gleefully degenerate behavior, and bittersweet nostalgia.
This works particularly well in the larger pieces which tend to overwhelm me with their enormity as I work. The Sisyphean task of painting the same image hundreds of times is often anxiety inducing and exhausting. But when the process is complete and I allow my eyes to become unfocused and my thoughts to wander, that frustration and unease transforms into tranquility. And that is my aim for the viewer as well. My hope is that they will use my paintings as a conduit to confronting their own mental health needs by providing some much needed and often undervalued stillness.
