Statement

Hovering somewhere between realism and impossibility, the environments in my current body of work are my attempt to patiently document the inhabited and emotional spaces I have experienced in my lifetime. I take vignettes from Midwestern, suburban life and translate their structural components—decks, houses, fireplaces, 2x4s—into illustrated elements that are themselves, characters in the drama that ensues. The American dream and the economic prosperity it fetishizes is as elusive as ever for so many, but how determinedly people latch on to symbols of leisure and status that they can build into their living rooms or backyards. In some of my paintings, in which I depict space from an axonometric viewpoint, the deconstruction of architectural motifs affiliated with “dream houses” becomes literal; walls and boards fly off their frames to reveal how to the structure can be made—or unmade.