To look at one of my paintings is to look through my eyes. I see the world as patterns.– three dimensional objects become flat, two dimensional images. I concentrate on turning and combining the tiniest details into a larger abstract image that manifests itself into the intended subject matter.
My paint of choice is gouache. I like the feel of its opaque qualities and its very fine sandy texture. For me it’s the perfect medium to fill in the small squares and shapes. I first draw the image in pencil, then ink over with a fine tip artist pen. I then use a very tiny brush to paint in my unique palette of colors.
Cityscapes are a perfect subject for my process. The angular properties of the buildings and various architectural elements allow me to draw out very tight, detailed compositions of patterns. The spacial relationships between buildings, as in overlapping and perspective, is what I convert from 3D to 2D in my head. I paint a lot of images of Cleveland as I’m proud of my hometown and feel like I’m exploring the city more with each piece. Any city has its proud residents and I paint others cities as well in hopes of connecting with those particular people.
Sea creatures are a good fit for my style as well. The organic forms of the scales, suckers and flowing tentacles are a stark contrast from the angular buildings in the cityscapes, but they are different types of tiny details to build with. The sea creatures series started with the octopus. I watched a documentary on them and was inspired by their high intelligence level and sentient nature. They are almost alien in nature. As with the cityscapes perspective and overlapping spacial elements are flattened as the patterns fill the image in. The ocean is full of wild and weird creatures that I continue to explore in my art.
