ARTIST STATEMENT

Painting is currently the primary language of my practice. Through the ongoing Alternate Sides project, I use observational painting, modular reclaimed wood panels, and found materials to investigate how relationships between light, material, balance, and arrangement shape perception.

Each work begins through sustained observation. Rather than working from quick impressions, I spend long periods studying a subject until its familiar appearance begins to dissolve into subtleties of light, color, texture, form, and atmosphere. The resulting paintings are not intended to reproduce appearances as much as they translate the experience of looking closely enough for ordinary things to become unfamiliar again.

Images are constructed across individually painted reclaimed wood panels that are assembled into a single composition and then separated by narrow intervals. Fragmentation is not simply a visual strategy but an active part of the work's structure. The spaces between the panels alter the rhythm of observation, encouraging viewers to move through the image rather than consume it at a glance. The relationships between the parts become as significant as the painted surfaces themselves.

Working with reclaimed wood introduces another layer to the investigation. Once used for structural purposes, the material carries evidence of its previous life—grain, wear, imperfections, and history—which remain present beneath the painted image. Rather than concealing those qualities, I treat them as collaborators in the work, allowing material and image to exist simultaneously.

Although the subjects range from portraiture and family history to food, labor, migration, cultural memory, and everyday objects, they are united by a common investigation into attention. Each painting asks how careful observation can transform our relationship to what has been in front of us all along.

Ultimately, Alternate Sides is an exploration of perception itself. The relationships within each work create the conditions for a different way of seeing, inviting viewers to slow their pace of looking and experience observation not as passive viewing, but as an active process of inquiry.