My subject matter is often ordinary or mundane, sometimes humorous, and occasionally nostalgic. In the last year, I have been fortunate enough to have found a voice in both the personal and cultural themes I address, as well as in the medium of screen printing.
Lately, I have been drawn to the concept of artificial flight. The very idea that one can take common materials-canvas, aluminum, fiberglass, a sheet of notebook paper-and create structures that defy gravity is infinitely inspiring. For me, manmade structures of flight inherently serve as a symbolic affront to the forces that aim to keep us grounded, particularly as we grow older. Through art, I am pursuing my own little place in this world. The subtext is that I retreat ever faster from the adult life I'm working to avoid-that is, one of assimilation and sacrificed autonomy.
To be clear, I am less interested in preserving youth or adolescence than I am with resisting archetypical adulthood. From the professional workplace to our elected officials, I regularly see so-called "adults" act with profound sanctimony, hypocrisy, and sycophantism. I have grown increasingly uncomfortable with societal expectations to abandon fundamental moral principles for social complacency by somehow coming to accept the insanity of the world as "just the way things are."
Through doctrines made ubiquitous by corporate media, platitudinous sloganeering, fashionable apathy, and the marginalization of dissenting opinions; we are taught to be subordinate as we work and act against our collective best interests. And we're taken along on witch hunts, wars, and every imagination-stifling reality show in between.
Therefore, from whatever recesses of the margins I currently operate, I seek to undermine this culturally issued set of instructions-the corrupt and sinking ship we are all coerced into boarding-in every gesture, no matter how insignificant.