Modern audiences are accustomed to over stimulation. We text a lover, while our friends gossip, while a movie plays in the background, while somebody outside blasts music from their car. It is this hyper-stimulation that I am interested in exploring and utilizing, employing a circus of sensations in an effort to engage the modern viewer. My paintings are placed within an enclosed, multi-sensual environment, where music, food, scents, long titles, and touchable items create an expanded vocabulary in which to explore a variety of modern and traditional subjects. Rather than expecting the viewer to supply their own meaning, I deliver a narrative and the necessary ingredients for the viewer to accept or reject this narrative.
Meanwhile, erecting an environment that simultaneously stimulates all or more than one of the viewers primary senses allows me and the viewer to explore the synchronicity of sensual combinations. For example, opera feels inappropriate in a dive bar but perfectly matches the interior of the Vatican where all the statues seem to serenade the worshippers. Beethoven animates trees in the country but seems miscast inside a municipal lobby. Webern on the other can make the fluorescent light fixtures feel dangerous and alive. Obviously, these are my own opinions. But existing in an overstimulated society leads me directly to the questions of whether these associations are learned or does inspiration create siblings in different mediums?
Selected Exhibitions:
L Magazine, Southern Comfort Finalist at the Knitting Factory January, 2012
Bushwick Open Studios 2008 & 2009
320 Gallery July 2010 Group Show
Greenpoint Gallery November 2010 Group Show
