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Surface Tension
Thelma Sadoff Center for the Arts
Fond du Lac, Wisconsin
May 16 - June 27, 2025
My art practice is an analog response to developments in the life sciences that are enabling alterations to the genomes of a range of organisms, including humans. It is also an argument for the relevance of painting in a digital era and an endorsement of the medium’s ability to reflect human experience and identity through time.
Adopting the visual culture of biology as metaphor and armature, I treat paint as if it were an organism, exploring its material, chromatic and formal properties using a process that combines chance occurrences with a systematic approach. My methodology is time-intensive and relies on continuous experimentation with paint and thinning agents; pouring, peeling, sanding and layering; and an ongoing dialogue with my preceding works.
In biology, “recombination” occurs when genetic material from disparate sources is combined, either naturally or in the lab, to create new DNA, proteins and organisms. This process parallels the way I create my paintings: by repeatedly inserting chance into a rules-based strategy while reintegrating elements from prior paintings (paint membranes, contours and scans of paint pours, deconstructed surfaces) into new works.
As each painting develops, it becomes a meeting ground between abstraction and the petri dish—as well as a record of my negotiations between opacity and translucency, surface and illusion, past and present, expansion and containment, and contingency and control.