I have composed topographical landscape images using layered concoctions of acrylic paint mixed with acrylic mediums, matte gel and modeling paste.  I usually apply paint with a 3 to 12-inch putty knife.  Occasionally I use rollers, brushes, or a pallet knife. With acrylic paint and mediums I try to achieve a heavily textured natural surface.  My compositions consist of clusters or shapes of colored crusts that in some way associate with each other.

This method of working has evolved from small watercolor and oil paintings that I produced in undergraduate school.  Those paintings were compositions of bundled linear meanderings.  The scale of those paintings suggested that those images referenced the intricate surfaces of microscopic organisms. 

As a graduate student I have continued to pursue a textural quality in my paintings.  Through many paintings I have learned to approach a picture as one large area as opposed to many divided sections.  Straight, curved, jagged, symmetry, asymmetry, hard, soft, light and dark are all visual signs that I combine to imply the forces and intricacies of a natural landmass.  From a topographical view landmasses provide countless spatial compositions where shapes are separated or intertwined with one another.  I imitate these images with my compositions of improvised shapes, colors and textures.

The images of land that I encounter on the Internet, television, in video games, photographs, airplane windows, and paintings function as reference points for my imagery. One possibility that my paintings allow that none these images allow is the chance to actually reach out and touch a large area of land.  I do not intend for viewers of my work to touch my work but I do want them to feel compelled to do so.  With my paintings I suggest that humans are actually bigger than they are.

I believe that when people find a piece of art to be aesthetically pleasing they are compelled to interact or imagine their interaction with an object or within an image.  Such an interest in an object or image is simply a product of human curiosity and our desire to know and understand things.  When someone has an aesthetic reaction to one of my paintings I get a feeling of satisfaction but I do not feel as though I have pulled off a magic trick nor do I believe that I have discovered any understanding about land that is above normal human achievement.  In producing an aesthetically pleasing piece of art I have simply worked hard and likely very long demonstrate my specific idea about a topic that I feel is very significant.  I deem land, travel, and the dichotomous scale of land observed in topography as subjects worthy of artistic representation. 

I understand my work best as Abstracted Landscape paintings and I am intrigued by the notion that paintings do not need to establish a 3-deminsional perspective in describing natural forms, objects, or occurrences.  Sam Gilliam, Aaron Douglass, James Brooks, Zao Wou Ki, Chu The-Chen, Clyfford Still, Joseph W. M. Turner, and Robert Motherwell are all artists that have a great sensitivity for and command of space in a composition.  It is my intent to produce paintings that share the aesthetic qualities of those produced by theses great painters.  After spending much time rendering small detailed narrative illustrations in undergraduate school, I now embrace the exploration of painterly spatial relationships in my work.