Statement + Bio

As a donor-conceived, queer, Buddhist ecological artist, I wonder how cultural, spiritual and scientific contexts influence our understanding of what is “natural”.  My work is informed by the concepts of queer ecology and natureculture, impermanence and emptiness in Zen, and both biological and relational kinship. 

The tension between the "natural" and "unnatural" dictates every facet of my practice, including the subject matter, research, process and materials.  I work primarily with pigment on paper, and the resulting works are ephemeral and somewhat delicate.  After decades of working primarily in commercially-produced paint, I now use only natural pigments I make myself from foraged plants, soils, and rocks - from my backyard, public lands and roadsides. I research the taxonomy of the natural materials I use, as well as their biogeographical status, phytochemicals, and history (in particular, Indigenous usage).  I document the process of making the pigments and maintain a recipe book. I lead community workshops in mindful observation of nature, ethical foraging, and distilling natural pigment.  I hike regularly and maintain a nature journal.

My current landscapes are based on my own photographs of the urban spaces I traverse every day.  In these paintings, I strip the urban landscapes of their man-made objects, using the white negative space to analyze our fractured relationship with the terrain. By painting only what is natural with materials that are equally so, I highlight how the built environment distorts our perception of the natural world. This work serves as a silent argument against the capitalist disconnection from nature, and we can see this disconnection played out in how we divide and disrupt land, water and sky.

I am using the same ink that was used to write the Constitution, Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence, oak gall ink, to paint American families that include a transgender member. The work challenges cultural and political assumptions about transgender people by representing them in mundane, intimate scenes of family life.  Intended to be monumental works at least 12 feet in height, I will complete 50 family portraits, each representing a different state in the United States.  The process for this work begins by spending a full day with each family, photographing their activities and observing their inter-personal dynamics.  Back in the studio I create a scene  - a snapshot of their life together - that I draft using the same ink as the original Constitutional document. This new body of work is related to a 2010-2012 series I created of families led by LGB parents.

Past series were based on the 19th century Hudson River School and manifest destiny, ecological issues, Buddhist parables, and the irony of contemporary American life. 

I was born in Darby, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia. I received my BFA from Tyler School of Art (Temple University); MFA from Indiana University, Bloomington, both in painting.

My work is in the permanent collections of the Hilliard Art Museum, the New Mexico Museum of Art and the Rollins Museum of Art, as well as notable private collections.  I have received residency fellowships from the Lenz Foundation, Caldera, the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Americans for the Arts. 

I currently live in Topanga, CA, near Los Angeles, with my wife, Amber, a philosophy professor, and our dog, Daisy Mae Tsunami.