The windowed still-life paintings draw from a number of different influences. The "can" paintings began while looking
at everyday objects such as boxes of food and beverage containers. I first noticed them at the breakfast table and in the
recycling bin. Associations arise as packages became more familiar. What'd begun as spacing out while looking into the fridge
led to meandering through different grocery stores, looking for food based not on brand, contents, or pricing but on design,
emblem, and color. Packages, cans, plastic bottles became miniature worlds, that could be arranged into constellations.
Close up, flat planes of color on the labels sometimes suggest deep space. Likewise deeper spaces beyond these still-life
landscapes sometimes seem to flatten. While painting, a dialog ensues between these real and imagined depths. As the scope
of the paintings are broadened, the geometry of the room and perhaps people in the room, as well as the landscape beyond the
studio window, begin to intertwine and suggest a new narrative; a narrative of forms that goes beyond utilitarian function
and becomes closer to pure shape and distance.
At night it is fun to work near street lamps, especially in areas where there is elongated and oblique angled architecture.
In the dark it seems that the identity of what is being painted breaks down sooner into shape and color. Areas and spaces
have an original purpose, an intended function. What becomes interesting in these paintings is when the original identities
begin to slip away and a new connection takes place, one enmeshed with emotion, memory and internal stories.
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