I’ve been concerned about my own mortality recently.

What digital and physical records of my actions over the course of my life will be contained in my legacy?  What intangible consequences will I have on the people around me? And what art will I leave behind?

In my undergraduate art history courses I was most drawn to storytelling. Each object was a jumping off point into a larger context of the life of each artist. Where were they? Why did they make this? Who was this for? Who were the people around them? How can we connect with them? A larger story always began to form. In particular, the Baroque painters stood out to me. I loved the drama created by strong directional lighting and bold compositions focused on human subjects.

A large portion of my oil paintings are based on my own street photography. It’s intended to capture moments as authentically as possible. People don’t act natural and authentic when they know someone is watching, it’s involuntary. I want to preserve the moments people forget about as unimportant in the techniques and materials that were used by the great artists before me. A portrait of someone with their head buried in their phone, using it to fight the banality of daily life, describes our modern conditions in honest and simple terms.