My landscape paintings consider outdoor spaces, often parks and roadsides, close to me. I am interested in the layers of time and collective use of public spaces, and I try to observe closely the sheer amount of visual information that exists outdoors.

In reference to this visual overabundance, I begin my paintings by creating textures with plaster on panel surfaces. I incise patterns of cast light and other natural ephemera when building low relief. Through carving and sculpting, I also mimic rock and mineral forms, all before painting.

My works both imitate the experience of landscape and become their own layer of encounter, re-materializing chunks of land into new solid forms. As my brush responds to the panel’s surface topography while painting, the works merge location-based observation with personal invention informed by my memory of the place I’ve been.

I am influenced by American tendencies to romanticize landscape, both historical and contemporary. I explore these projections while depicting leaves, branches, and other natural remnants of the mid-Atlantic region where I live. Over time, I imbue these painted collections of living and inert beings with emotive qualities—sections of romanticism, anxiety, dread, and wonder, communicated through color and mark. At times, I use fluorescent and metallic paints to create visceral flashes against delicate passages, questioning the stability of the final painted image upon its highly physical surface.

I’m continually curious how my surface textures can support and undermine the representation of place, ideally performing both at once. Through this, my works become tactile fragments of my perception, reflecting the unstable, shifting dynamics of human-landscape relationships.