Featured Interview with Denver Art Museum

Super grateful for the chance to be interviewed by the Denver Art Museum. I hope you will enjoy a quick snippet of the interview, below. The entire interview can be found on the Denver Art Museum’s website.

Your technique and approach to painting is very unique and expressive, can you explain your technical process and choice of materials?

I build up my foundation by creating a developed underpainting that includes establishing a pronounced texture with various granular materials such as glass and crushed stone. I then construct a complex palette by adding layers of acrylic pigment — often through delicate layers of pours. An oil stick allows me to add expressive marks and details. Pigment stains the crystalline surface, clinging delicately to the peaks and troughs.

When beginning a new work, how do you choose what to paint next? Is there a particular process that informs or influences what you paint?

I notice that I am more moved by color than anything. I often find myself amidst an obsession over a particular hue. Currently, I am working on a body of work centered around the diurnal sky. These are not representational of cloudscapes or meant to capture the sky in a realistic manner, but are rather pulling from the palette and gauzy expansiveness overhead. I’ve been painting in this palette for several months now and will continue to do so until it feels complete. It feels like this idea just takes hold of me for months at a time.

Travel—specifically, spending time away from the buzz of the city, feeds and inspires my work. A camping trip will often give me plenty of fodder to work from. Most of my work draws inspiration from being in the outdoors—away from light and noise pollution and nestled amidst the natural landscape of Colorado and the greater southwest region.

Is there anything that you want people to see or feel when viewing your work?

I want my work to be experienced in the way that it shows up for each person—unique, personal and sometimes, intangible. These are meant to be meditations on color and space. Each person’s experience is purely individual; a composite of experiences and memories that are revealed when looking at that perfect shade of blue. I hope that my paintings bring a sense of the serene, an offering of silence, a revelation of something that perhaps someone has not thought about in a very long time.

Feel free to reach the entire interview on the Denver Art Museum’s website.