A lifelong painter, my work has often explored the physical qualities of paint. While deeply influenced by Color Field, I have also felt drawn to landscape; as a result, there has often been an element of abstraction to my paintings, with the paint deployed in service of stylized depiction of earth, water, air, and light. In 2024, I modified my technique (which has long involved diluted paint migrating across a horizontal surface) after the accidental discovery of a new way to facilitate the flow of pigment. The result was a dramatic representation of ravaged treescapes.

Technically, my approach takes advantage of paint’s essential, material qualities in novel ways: housepaint, not tube paint; matte, not glossy; and – crucially – the painted surface is not canvas, but silkscreen fabric, which fosters a translucent dimensionality when mounted on an opaque surface. Because housepaint is by nature diluted, I work with the silk on a tabletop. This unleashes the paint to behave the way that water and organic elements do in the natural world, flowing and merging into shapes – and creating chromatic tones – that are the result of their inherent qualities. In short, it results in landscape because it is the stuff of landscape: earth, water, air, and light – and all in motion.

The process subverts my artistic authority by granting the paint a significant role in shaping what emerges. The result is assertion and accommodation as the paint’s behavior influences my creative decision making and fosters an opportunity to escape the pull of intention and preconception. In this respect, the work resonates with ghost forests in the world around us: we might have started it, but we have limited power to control what we have unleashed.