Japan

Japan is my favorite place in the entire world. When i grow up, it's where I want to live. But Japan is full of dualities that simultaneously repulse and endear me. There is the loneliness only a total lack of isolation can bring (surely you have felt your loneliest in a crowd of people?), westernization and it counterbalance of maniacal nationalism, and repression combined with a suffocating need to be unique. Such complexity makes Japan the perfect subject of countless portraits in my work.

"the mountain's hands"

oil and glitter on wood

18"x18"

2009

"Upside-down Tokyo"

oil on wood

18"x18"

2009

"Wrong Subway Stop Confusion"

watercolor, colored pencil and pen & ink on watercolor paper

13"x19"

2009

"Pop Topography (the Tokyo/Kyoto dichotomy)"

18"x24"

pen & ink on illustration board

2009

The Death of 'Unique'

Here is a piece that speaks for itself. However, I will venture into reiteration and explain it in words. This is my commentary on the state of the individual in modern perception. "Individual" has a certain image (the same for everybody), and we have reached a point where "individual" is a uniform like any other.

"i am an individual"

watercolor, colored pencil and pen & ink on illustration board

each piece 6"x15"

2009

In the Swingin' Sixties

These works are souvenirs from the time travelling trip I would take to the nineteen-sixties if only time travel weren't impossible.

"Twiggy's Closet"

watercolor and pen & ink on paper

11"x17"

2009

"Flower Children Frolic in Fields of Daisies"

oil on masonite

18"x24"

2008

"Earth from Space (1965)"

oil on wood

18"x24"

2008

Heroes as muses

Here is a series of monochromatic portraits. Each is set to a relevant back color, by my interpretation of each of their writings. Few men have influenced me the way that Freud and Dylan have.

"Although Freud hated the Surrealists"

oil and dayglo paint on canvas

9"x12"

2007

"Go, driver, go"

oil on masonite

18"x18"

2008

Figural

A process of coming to understand the body in blocks of color. It is human; it is paint on canvas, too.

"Delusions of Grandeur"

oil on canvas paper

18"x24"

2008

"She is nowhere..."

oil on canvas paper

18"x24"

2008

"Self-portrait (if only I had a locket)"

oil on canvas paper

18"x24"

2007

"Modern Androgyny"

oil on canvas paper

18"x24"

2008

"A pose of casual waiting"

oil on canvas paper

18"x24"

2008

"Coming into being"

oil on canvas paper

18"x24"

2007

"Looked like someone I used to know when asleep"

oil on canvas paper

18"x24"

2008

Monochromatism

Black and white and all the shades of grey between are all I need.

"Skin & Bones"

graphite and a few sprays of ink on smooth white paper

17"x22"

2006

"She was the Moon"

graphite and charcoal scratches on smooth white paper

17"x22"

2006

Finding Wonder in the Banal

I decided to explore turning everyday sights into things of otherworldly significance. By utilizing scale and isolation, still lifes and rhinestones become strong, surreal images.

"Of silver boots, porcelain rabbits, and black glass"

colored pencil, white paper, watercolor and gloss medium on black matte board

16"x20"

2009

"Glamour Mountain"

watercolor, colored pencil and pen & ink on illustration board

16"x20"

2009