Over the last year since this realization I've tried to embrace some of the more midwest/waterway inspired aspects of my paintings and drawings and dive into what's become a fairly representative subject matter when it comes to my work. Further, though I've only seen the ocean a handful of times, travelled overseas once, and spent almost my entire life in the Midwest, this connection to water, and the formative experiences I've had with it, gives me a real personal relationship with something ubiquitous to human life bringing real connection, no matter how tenuous, with humans around the world, art history, and the universal human experience. It's something I can call my own, but something everyone can also connect with in some way.

The Time We Spend Looking Outside opens Friday August 7th at 5PM and run until August 30th at the Carnelian Art Gallery in Madison Wisconsin. 

Learn more about the Carnelian Art Gallery HERE
Take a look at the facebook event page HERE

Now, don't get me wrong, If someone wants to buy something at a fair price, it's getting sold, but I've worked on reframing how I look at inventory as someone who makes literal tons of artwork; It's not "work that failed to sell" it's an opportunity to preserve, enjoy, and reflect on my life creating art. Perhaps some of that is simply delusional self-preservation out of necessity...but there's truth to it as well. I used to enter my storage unit with a sense of dread; it was a physical representation of my failures, even though I still liked the actual art. Now I see my own private treasure-trove, offering a glimpse into forgotten times and lost conversations, and providing ​physical evidence of accomplishment and potential.

While a couple hundred bucks would be nice, nothing quite beats rediscovering a painting with which you once put your time, energy and attention toward for days if not weeks. A sale may have injected a momentary boost, but shuffling through a hundred of your own paintings is an experience every artist should get to enjoy at some point. I'm sure It would be different if I was struggling to put food on the table, but knowing that cash would have just been another internet payment or a weekly deposit or wasted on a night out, I prefer the company of tens of thousands of hours of hard work. Again, I wouldn't turn down a sale, even for my all-time favorites, but I now enter the storage unit with a sense of excitement and accomplishment; What will I rediscover this week? What unappreciated detail will stand out ten years later? What painting has been forgotten and deserves the light of day? Look at all this stuff I made that, at least to me, still stands strong and is worth being proud of!? Seeing that laid out in front of you is undeniably cool.

From a source of disappointment to one of pride and encouragement, I used to look at storage and a large inventory as proof of failure. Now I see accomplishment, evidence of constant improvement and the potential for the next canvas. As much as it's a place to store artwork, it's also preserving and managing my own "legacy"...and perhaps keeping the work together for some greater end than just funding my next few months of (insert generic subscription) is an accomplishment in its own right.

Some more recent trends can also be seen, such as the striped shorts-wearing-ambiguous figure and a touch of landscape to the right, but the overall lack of of setting separates it from much of my recent work and helps communicate that dream-like sense weightlessness and surrealism. The painting to the right, one of my favorites from the Pandemic Painting series, exemplifies the differences. The figure here is immersed in the background, almost taking a backseat to the trees and shapes that surround them. Some of the more painterly techniques can be seen here and in Dreams that are lacking in the 2015 painting, which give recent work a sense of depth and gravity that I think are missing in earlier paintings. 

Buy Dreams today over on the shop or contact me for deals on multiple paintings. You can also see details from the painting here.

Now, I realize it's not going to be everyone's cup of tea. A frame is meant to contain an artwork and provide it an area to live, separating it from its surroundings. A finished painting, traditionally, at the very least has clean edges if not a contrasting frame. This is a bit "messy" and "unfinished"...but then again I've never been one for refinement...Here, I am purposefully breaking that barrier, challenging the frame's effectiveness or purpose in the first place. In a lot of my painting I use windows and frames as tools to break up space. I think this is an extension of that made literal. The frame is no longer a frame of paint, but a painted frame; a barrier but a passable one.

I've been a little MIA on the blogs lately, not necessarily because I haven't had anything going on but maybe the opposite. With flood cleanup taking much of August and a few big projects both on the art and design side of the studio underway in September, not to mention a northwoods vacation, time's been a little tight lately...but fear not. Here is a Fall Update for those itching to know what I've been up to. 

First up is my latest public art project, The Downtown Milwaukee Ornament Trail. I was honored to be chosen for the second year of the project, completing Blossom just a couple weeks ago. I'll post an update with the exact location but keep an eye out as these will be popping up downtown if they're not already installed. I'll also be posting final pictures on-site as well as a making-of video,

Second up, I've got three small-scale paintings heading to New York state for a small-scale show in November. All three are from 2025, with one being my first ever "self-portrait" going on view (pictured to the right).

Last thing I've got rolling at the moment is a new series of large-scale paintings using frames I was gifted by one of my biggest collectors and great friends, which appropriately I've been calling "The Frame Series". I've got one complete and another in progress...with maybe 10 more frames waiting to join in. 

The first in the series is to the right, titled Virgil. The second, in progress below, tentatively titled Pollux. As you could probably assume by the titles, the new series will reach back into roman and greek history, mythology and philosophy, creating tangents that illuminate modern day intra and interpersonal thoughts, experiences and issues. 

While many know my productivity, few realize the amount of art I've actually produced in the last decade-plus. My 10x20' storage unit is already bursting at the seams, and the loss of the basement (at least for the time-being) provided me with an immediate need to address the storage situation. Starting November 1st I'll be moving to a new climate-controlled unit which, on top of providing a better environment for the art, will give me the opportunity to actually go through everything, document it, and, to some extent, get a full catalog of everything I've done since college. I'll be posting updates and lots of pictures...but I'll also be using this as a chance to discount some older work and hopefully find them new homes. Contact me directly if you'd like to schedule a storage visit or come out while the move is in-progress. This might be the only chance in a long time to see all 1K+ arts till my definitely-going-to-happen retrospective at MOMA in 2072.

One aspect of this series that I've always wanted to explore was purposefully leaving the area around the canvas exposed during the process and on view after completion. Not only does this (literally and figuratively) break the containment of the painting but provides insight into the process and, as I've always desired, takes art a bit off the pedestal, bringing humanity to the works in contrast to the idealized stereotypical assumption of  "isolated genius" or sterilization that often overwhelms art on a gallery wall.

We had a family cottage along the Mississippi growing up and there were yearly floods there, but as a summer stop you only dealt with the aftermath. And with the cottage on stilts (yearly flooding) cleanup largely just meant removing any mud-covered items that may have been swept along. 

​Though we're mostly cleaned up and done with the bulk of the work, some scars remain from the recent floods in Milwaukee. You can see them in destroyed grass bordering roads; they're visible in the mud still caked on side-streets and gutters; some homes are visibly destroyed; others are harder to spot and arise when dark clouds roll in, maybe a sprinkle here and there, and quickening heartbeat. We've been largely lucky with a lack of rain over the last couple weeks but any time a cloud makes its presence known, my heart rate jumps a bit.

I know water and waterways have always played a large roll in my painting and it's definitely been kicked into high gear since 2020, if not years before, but it took me a while to realize just how influential the river was. Fast forward to 2025 and dealing with my first major flood cleanup, I was a bit shocked to see how much recent art deals with scenes that could easily be interpreted as floods. 

This isn't to say there's some cosmic coalescence driving my art (or the weather) but I'm beginning to realize a proximity to water really has been a major influence and the more I embrace that proclivity, the art has come pretty fast and, in my opinion, successfully executed for the most part. 

I haven't been painting as much or as large, and I'd like to change that, but the work I have done seems to be building, maybe not a series, but a repeating theme, which is somewhat exciting to see. Every great artists seems to have their go-tos... About time I joined the club (of having a go-to not being a great artist. YET at least)

It's been a weird couple weeks but thankfully things are returning to normal. While I definitely hope the real-world floods subside, it will be interesting to see how this and all my past experiences with water will continue to play a role.