Landscapes:

My paintings are based on the landscapes of my neighborhood in Lakeland, compositions I have encounted on my daily routine: walking the dog, out and about with my kids, etc.  If I spot an interesting composition I will either take a picture or draw it, or both, and manipulate the image in Photoshop. Using Photoshop I flatten areas in the image, play with the composition, and tweak the colors.

In my most recent paintings I take the process one step further in Photoshop by incorporating a street map of Lakeland into the painting.  By incorporating a map into a painting I’m combining two different perspectives into a single scene: a map, which is meant to be read literally, and a painting, which is a stylized representation.

Maps: The abstract paintings are based on maps, usually maps of neighborhoods of where I have lived or worked. Most of the map paintings are based on street maps, with a chunk of them devoted to airport maps.

Maps interest me because they are a representation of reality, and we take for granted that they are an accurate representation. We faithfully assume, for the most part, what we are looking at is accurate. Can we be sure of this? Secondly, maps are an abstraction, reducing the world to lines and shapes and using a range of formal means to do so: line, color, scale, shape, size, etc. What fascinates me, specifically as a painter, is the symbolic arrangement of these formal elements and how they translate as formal elements from a map to an abstract painting.