the drums artist statement.

This body of work addresses various techniques in paint application, color combination, and scale of displayed work to cohesively depict a very public and very intimate mode.


From Still Life with Woodpecker. By tom robbins. Page 238.

… The Dean of Inanimate Objects at Outlaw College would attribute the pyramid’s detachment, as compared to the Camel pack’s intimacy, to relative scale. Objects smaller than the human body, says the dean, possess the quality of privateness. Objects larger than the human body possess the quality of publicness. The larger the object, the less private and more public its mode. We might question the dean, provided we could get his nose out of a tequila bottle or his girlfriend’s panties, about the moon. The moon is a hell of a lot bigger than the biggest pyramid and can be seen by far more people at any one time. The moon is about as public as a thing can be. Yet the moon seldom fails to invoke a sense of intimacy. We might logically assume that since two of the moon’s primary characteristics—light and gravitational pull—directly, personally affect us, that that is the source of its intimate nature. Unfortunately, logic doesn’t cut the mustard at Outlaw College. The dean would snort, puff his cheap cigar, and contend that the moon is as intimate as it is public because of its markings. As with many ornaments of tiny size, its sense of intimacy is exploited through surface detail. Surface incident sets up internal relationships, and internal relationships break down the external gestalt, the publicness.


The intimate scale of these paintings serves to further the development of the definition of nonportrait. Portraiture, developed to shed light on a noteworthy individual, is typically reserved for literal translations of the subject’s visual presence. To abstractly embrace the spirit of an individual through a very meticulous technical way of painting is the primary characteristic of a nonportrait.
The subjects of these abstract nonportraits range from people and places I know to memories and ideas, all of which my life probably wouldn’t be the same. They all almost serve as a list of 101 ‘nouns’ that define me. Inevitably, as much as I’d love to deny it, creating a larger sort of self portrait; presumably, a nonportrait.
I set the goal of completing over a hundred paintings back in December, shortly after graduating from the ASU Art Department.