My work—in the form of paintings, drawings, site-specific installations, and public-art works—stems from patterns and traces of growth and transformation in the natural world and the built environment. Overall, I strive to delineate the emotional resonance that I see in forms made by natural forces.
In my works, masses of lines evoke various influences: organic structures like plants, hair, muscles, and fungi; natural systems such as waves and wind currents; geological strata; and topographical maps. These linear networks are often based on hand-drawn records of physical effects of nature in my immediate surroundings—like a bent plane around a window, a sloping floor, or the decaying walls in my former studio.
My process includes making tracings and rubbings of surfaces like plywood, cracking plaster, and corroding metal. I think of these marks as the calligraphic signatures of quotidian natural effects and as personal interpretations of the material evidence of time.
I grew up seeing electron micrographs and lab specimens, which led me to an early emphasis on abstraction. In making my own abstracted images of nature, I am invested in the hand-drawn line for its conveyance of individualism, imperfection, and fragility, and I see my use of line as a tenuous analogy to traditional Asian ink painting.
Detail of Amateur Archaeology: Greenpoint Hospital. See more here.