About recent work

I record the fine print of ordinary life, in pursuit of extraordinary visual experience. My paintings contain written lists of ephemeral language, mapped into chromatic structures.

These works originated with small studies on graph paper in my datebook, made while riding the subway. To escape my habits of composition, I played games with numbers, randomness, and, finally, words. The written and visual results had a crazy logic and optical complexity that I still pursue.

Written in these paintings are collections of ambient found language from street signs, email, user agreements, packaging, news reports, and other sources. I take notes from the relentless flow of information saturating our lives and screens. I sort my notes into themed lists, and diagram the lists into generative, pattern-like formations. Self-devised rules yield unexpected color. On slate-like panels, penciled and inked writing and notations accompany gridded configurations of acrylic paint. Process unifies paintings variously containing tiled structures, linear networks, color gradients, and clusters of dots.

The written lists are artifacts of daily existence. Rosters of news headlines or email excerpts hint at political and social vicissitudes. Lists of text messages record intimate conversation. Words from street signs and subway ads trace the texture of urban life. Some lists document a journey or record intimate conversation. Some are catalogs: as of acronyms, names of streets, or bird species. The mismatched lexicons often make sense in some non-linear, even ridiculous way. In vernacular scraps, I find absurdity, hints of narrative, and statements of truth. These panels can be called illuminated lexicons of 21st century life.