Artist Statement

I make work that closely examines the mundane details of everyday life. I use oil paints or colored pencils which work well with my highly-rendered, realistic style. I can find the precise color, and capture the tiniest reflections using these media. It requires dozens of hours to really see a thing and patiently labor over a work to accurately represent it. Modern life floods us with stuff to passively observe. If we actively engage at all, it’s often to casually snap a photo, and even then we don’t take the time to really see the thing. My work slows down the process of looking and invites the viewer to look long and hard at visual relationships of an image that might otherwise be passed by in the forced sprint of scrolling and clicking of contemporary image consumption. 

I imbue meaning into ordinary objects through applying extraordinary attention to their details in my work. Nobody says “wow” about a can of tomato sauce on a shelf or in a photograph, but somewhere in the art-making process, magic happens and that humble can of tomato sauce becomes meaningful and worthy of attention. By rendering the banal objects that comprise our everyday existence, I hope the viewer might savour the complexity and beauty that can enrich our lives in a small, quiet moment.