It is more significant to keep one’s painting in a state of severe experimentation than to become a quick success by means of cheap repetition.
— Marsden Hartley, as quoted by Bill Jensen
There is a crack, a crack in everything:
That’s how the light gets in.
— Leonard Cohen, Anthem
I am quite hesitant regarding words about art. Too often language obscures — rather than illuminates — true encounter.
Of course, what is presented on this website is not actual art, but merely its pale, digital ghosts. My work, like anything that aspires to the appellation of “art,” is a kind of embodied meaning, intended to be encountered by embodied people.
A few of the lights that have illumined my path: Pieter Bruegel the Elder, John Henry Twachtman, Raimonds Staprans, Giorgio Morandi, David Hockney. There are of course many others, but these will give an idea of where I draw influence.
I loosely confine myself to the landscape genre, as it offers me a very flexible latticework on which to hang my little skeins of paint.
As I find myself at what is often called “mid-career,” I’m far less concerned with narrative content than I once was. Instead, I’m largely content with pursuing process and lines of inquiry. Each work emerges rather like an archaeological dig run backwards, sometimes over the course of years. With each piece, and ideally with the larger thrust of the work as a whole, my aim is both foolishly grandiose and extraordinarily simple. On the one hand, I’m trying to evoke some tiny sliver of the ineffable, and on the other, I’m really just trying to stick the landing.
Curriculum Vitae
Born 1979, Springfield, Missouri
Lives and works in Brooklyn, NY
Education
2007 School of Visual Arts, New York, NY, MFA Illustration
2002 Drury University, Springfield, MO, BA Fine Arts & Design Arts
Solo & 2-Person Exhibitions
2019 A Consuming Fire, (with Luke Whitlatch); Keystone Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2013 Effortless as Fire; Giacobetti Paul Gallery; Brooklyn, NY
2004 Overlong; Good Girl Art Gallery; Springfield, MO
Overlong II; Joplin Law Convention Center; Joplin, MO
Selected Group Exhibitions
2018 Keystone Winter Group Show; Keystone Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
Keystone Spring Group Show; Keystone Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2014 Drury | NY | San Francisco | Berlin; Drury University, Springfield, MO
2013 Summer Group Show; Giacobetti Paul Gallery; Brooklyn, NY
2012 Modest in Scale; Abecedarian Gallery; Denver, CO
Summer Group Show; Giacobetti Paul Gallery; Brooklyn, NY
2011 An Evening with Zefrey Throwell (collaborator); Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
February Salon Show; Greenpoint Gallery; Brooklyn, NY
2010 Bring Your Own Art; X Initiative; New York, NY
Tattoo Culture 2010 Group Show; Tattoo Culture; Brooklyn, NY
2008 Tattoo Culture 2008 Group Show; Tattoo Culture; Brooklyn, NY
Entrepreneurship & Innovation Alumni Exhibition; Drury University; Springfield, MO
Photoworks, Prints and Artists’ Books; Abecedarian Gallery; Denver, CO
2007 Tattoo Culture 2007 Group Show; Tattoo Culture; Brooklyn, NY
MFA Thesis Show; School of Visual Arts Westside Gallery; New York, NY
Bird Beak Group Show; Headquarters Studio; New York, NY
Monmouth County Arts Council Juried Show; Monmouth Co. Museum of Art; Lincroft, NJ
Selected Press
Alfredo Spagna, Emaad Razzak, et. al., Ways of Thinking and Imagining, The Living Lab (Columbia University), April 2025: Contributed introductory essay & image
Jerry Saltz, How a Joyride in Gavin Brown’s Volvo Became Art, New York Magazine, March 19, 2011