Deluge Painting

My work changed drastically one day in 2010 when I found myself creating surreal organic environments. Although I started from a place of abstraction, they became filled with strange hybrids of flowers, cells, and symbols that appeared like organisms from another planet. It was only later that I found out I had a disease crawling through my body at an alarming rate. When my doctor showed me the scans and close-ups of the cells under a microscope, it looked almost identical to what I had been painting – tentacles and all. A new fascination with the macro universe and micro universe was born. This was a major departure for me after 12 years of exhibiting as Pop Surrealist portrait artist, with a mild obsession with European aristocracy, medical history, and the Old Masters. This series brings together my interests in botany, microbiology, monsters, space, disease, and the evolution of cells. Within those interests, I explore the particular roles that organisms, medicine, DNA, and hybrids play, all while creating from my own imagination and instinct. Shaping aesthetic outcomes of these paintings doesn’t come from research or re-creating what already exists; I create my own nature within these little worlds.