statement

My paintings explore the meaningful connections that can be forged between disparate materials. I work from discarded detritus found in my local environment, and look to exalt these objects by finding perceptual significance in them. This significance emerges from a conversation between the identities of these collected materials and the visual language that mediates their interaction. I work with both two and three-dimensional materials, and I am interested in the experience that manifests from the assemblage of these two worlds. More specifically, I revel in the possibility of creating a new ground that exists in the space between the native two and three-dimensional identities inherent in each individual form. And the shared visual language of line, shape, color, and texture acts as the means to unite these disparate worlds and construct verses of engaged perceptual awareness that transcend routine perceptions of everyday experience.

Painting serves as the jumping-off point for my explorations into the simultaneous autonomy and interconnection between the two and three-dimensional languages. I use paint to exploit the well-defined history and dialogue between painting and the phenomenal world. It is well established that painting has the ability to imitate nature. Recent history proves that painting is also free to reject these illusions and assert the inherent flatness of the surface it is painted on. More recently still, artists have bypassed the imitative process by placing physical objects directly onto their painting surfaces. I work within these different tendencies to question both the disparities and similarities between the visual languages of these dimensional worlds.

bio

born: 1984, Springfield, Illinois

education

Illinois State University, MFA, 2011
University of Illinois Springfield, BA, 2007
Lincoln Land Community College, AFA, 2004

selected publications

Strange Glue (Traditional & Avant-garde Collage), Weston, MA: Thompson Gallery, p. 98, 2012
ABSTRKT, Manifest Volume 57, Cincinnati, OH: Manifest Press, 2011

selected solo or two-person exhibits

Jeff Robinson, University Galleries: In Formal Conversations, Normal, Illinois, 2011

selected group shows

Swell Gallery: Degrees, West Dundee, IL, 2012
Jan Brandt Gallery: Odd Man Out, Bloomington, IL, 2012
Student Union Art Gallery, University of Massachusetts Amherst: Four More Than Two, Amherst, Massachusetts, 2011