As my work has evolved, I have subconsciously and consciously seized and emphasized the tangible elements of the artistic process. While studying the history of art, I became enthralled with the nonfinito works by Michelangelo, in which the great sculptor presciently foreshadowed more modern conceptions by leaving work unfinished, emphasizing the Neo-Platonic origins of the piece. The viewer is unquestionably aware that this life-like figure, for all its realism and dynamism, was borne of a rigid chunk of stone. Likewise, I was captivated by the layers of paint that one witnesses while gazing at a late Monet. Oil paintings that are thick, almost sculptural, seemed to consistently draw me in. As a result, my own work strives to not just represent a particular scene, but to represent an artistic process. In many of my paintings, paint itself has become the subject.
I believe in art as a means of expressing aesthetic beauty, and in this pursuit I sometimes find myself lost to the world, oblivious to everything except that glob of paint hanging from the tip of my brush in the moment before it makes contact with the canvas. The process at times consumes me, and this is the process I attempt to convey, whether it be through the palimpsests of brushstrokes or the mark of a chisel. Whether I am hastily laying down strokes to capture a moment of light in front of me before the sun moves, or painstakingly looking at the precise reflection in the stillest water, my work, at all times, pursues a depiction of the sublime world we live in that is filled with grace, sprezzatura, and life.
