Disconnection. Anxiety. Hopelessness. Powerlessness. 

 

All of these descriptions are actualized in this series of paintings and mixed media work. I feel disillusioned with the state of the world around me. Vitriol and self-servitude run rampant in our world that we are both actively destroying and are being compromised by diseases of the body and mind. 

 

My paintings explore the dreadful feelings of Covid, quarantine, the lack of physical touch, and the spread of the disease, hatred, and harmful ideologies. The emaciated and forlorn figures are physically rooted in barren landscapes as they are slowly consumed by the fires of the pandemic and ignorance. They cannot move. They have no arms or mouths to help themselves. They exist apart from each other in solitary sadness and longing without the ability to touch or communicate. Yet still in some a red dot forms and spreads as unmitigated flames of both disinformation and the virus. The figures are consumed by these external forces until just embers remain. All they can do is wait their turn and lament the past that was and the future that awaits.

The paintings are all a mixture of thick gesso sprayed with powdered charcoal. This is then covered with layers of oil washes and impasto. The resulting imagery is both darkly surreal and embodied with neo-impressionistic aesthetics.