My work focuses on relational inflection points painted in the high-noon, arid color palette of my rural Colorado youth and the sallow glow of casinos and dive bars. In detailed concept drawings and on canvas, I employ training in cinematography and architectural drafting to develop constructed narratives of the nuclear family in varying states of distress and complacency. Cinematic, slight high-angle compositions invite superiority over the subjects, while subtle distortions of perspective trap the viewer as complicit in the action. Pattern repetition and recurring iconography of shotguns, alcohol, flowers, and family heirlooms indicate the origin and cyclical intergenerational impact of rugged individualism. Rejecting the long-romanticized rural horizon, I often place figures in suffocating landscapes from which there is no escape.
These narratives are grounded in observation, collected oral histories, and research into the origin of idioms, norms, and propriety within rural America. My work trades easy condemnation for questions of cultural coercion and its impact on power and agency for those who are expected to abide by and uphold an America that didn’t actually exist.
The result is a series of anti-domestic propaganda—a visual challenge to previous sunny side up depictions of American life.