Art Exhibits

Artist Statement

Over the past several years, I observed and painted invisible geometric patterns that exist in the natural environment. This past summer, while looking at a scene of bearded irises beside a yellow fire hydrant, I had a moment of realization: natural forms and human-made forms such as buildings, machines, and statues can co-exist symbiotically to strike a balance of both geometric and organic forms in a landscape painting. While I know that this ‘epiphany’ isn’t exactly a novel discovery for humanity, (architects have long practiced designing structures in balance with nature), I am consumed by my search for scenes in which natural forms intermingle with human-made forms to strike a compelling and dynamic composition.

For this series, I wanted to showcase my development from the beginning of my geometric abstracted landscapes and back to my return to realism with geometric forms seamlessly embedded in the landscape. My progression from depicting solely nature scenes with embedded geometry, to scenes where nature meets human influence, has occurred in tandem with my personal habitat circulating around places more impacted by humans.

Before I had my own kids, I was much more often in the backcountry of the West. From 2012-2020, I embarked on 2-3 backpacking treks per year, and most of my painting reference photos came from those trips. Now that I have three little ones at home, I find that I wander into the ‘wild’ far less often than the previous decade. Still, I’ve made peace with not being as immersed in nature by seeing that there is still beauty and elegance that exists between natural and human-made forms. 

Preserving our wild spaces is more important than ever, yet the reality is that humans have encroached on the landscape more often than not. To ignore this in my paintings feels a bit inauthentic. Rather, in my evolving body of work, I hope to show that the natural world and the ‘human’ world are actually intertwined, and we can strive to exist in better harmony.