Recent Work

 Over the past 15 years, I have collected a large image library of title pages and individual frames from American comic books, most from about 1945 to 1975; as well as numerous poster images used to advertise science fiction and horror films from the same period. This subjectively determined archive has slowly become a foundation of my creative work. My paintings often depict copied fragments of landscape imagery that has been extracted from the background of particular narrative frames. Rather than focusing on the protagonists, I foreground the environmental events or disasters with which the characters grapple. Sometimes these visual elements are quite innocuous in the original narrative context, but take on greater affect when seen as a painting. Sometimes however they are spectacular and stretch the imagination. Lately, I have been amplifying these sorts of apocalyptic images, adding one to the other, doubling disasters. I am interested in the fractured ruins of painting’s discourse, ideas of the Sublime and Nature, and the distorted present day echoes of such ideas. My archival activity is not completely backwards-looking; a phantom image of the present may occasionally be discerned there, and perhaps, more predictive visions as well. Science-fiction and horror narratives of mid-20th century popular media are concurrent with the apogee of Modernism, and arguably express fears regarding some nascent dangers accompanying it. These stories first revealed the shadow side of Modernism in which our present culture of continual crisis originates. They outlined the catastrophes of a world yet to be, but now existent and ubiquitous. By aligning them with the present-day dilemmas and widespread dread they predate, I aim to study the mythic import of these fragmentary and degraded images.