Statement + Bio

I scrutinize what is natural and unnatural in cultural, spiritual, and ecological contexts.

In a series of urban landscape paintings on paper, I remove all man-made objects, leaving white paper that cuts apart our experience of the landscape. I use only pigments made plants and soils I forage for and process myself. In this series I illustrate how ecosystems, and our experience of nature, are mediated by the built environment. I am arguing that the environmental crisis is due, in large part, to our individual, socio-cultural, and capitalist disconnection from nature - and we can see this disconnection played out in how we divide and disrupt land, water and sky.

In another series I am creating portraits of families that include a transgender member - using the same ink that was used to write the Bill of Rights - oak gall ink. I will be painting one family from each state of the U.S. The process for this work includes spending a full day with each family, photographing their activities, and lobserving their inter-personal dynamics. Back in the studio I choose images to create a scene - a snapshop of their life together. The work challenges cultural and political assumptions that dehumanize transgendered people and claim that transgenderism is unnatural or abnormal.

After decades of working primarily in commercially-produced watercolor, I now use only natural pigments made from foraged plants, soils, rocks and other natural materials - from my own backyard, public lands and roadsides - so that my own process of making is part of investigating “natural” and “unnatural” as concepts.

Past series were based on the 19th century Hudson River School, manifest destiny, 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.