I never intended to make this series. The largest painting from this year (48x36") would have typically been among the smallest in a show from previous years, but for weeks after the flood I couldn't start anything large.There was a pervasive and constant stress that came with a large, empty canvas. Like I didn't think I could commit the time, or perhaps that there wasn't enough time in the first place. Catastrophe had hit and with every report of rain, it felt like another catastrophe was just around the corner. Why start something if you can't finish?

I found solace in the smaller scale. I could sit on the couch with a pack of painting markers, throw on a show or movie and get through a painting in a few hours, a day, or a couple over the weekend. There was much needed comfort in having control and the finish line in sight. It wasn't grand, but it was doable, and that was important. It also may sound stupid but the drawing aspect of the scale and acrylic markers felt more direct, controlled, and immediate and with no cleanup, guilt-free as I am a notorious brush destroyer and cleanup procrastinator. It felt easier and that's what I needed.

I also realized I was primarily making waterscapes, which I then realized, although maybe already knew, that waterscapes were an extremely common subject matter that repeated in my art since high school and beyond. The painting above, for instance, was one of only two I completed in the entire month of August following the flood. The paintings to the right were actually completed in the two months leading up to the flood, despite the similarities and timely subject matter.

While thinking about this I realized it made total sense. Growing up we had a family cottage on the Mississippi which found us spending almost every weekend on the river; I attended a YMCA summer camp in northern Minnesota for upwards of six years which featured canoe trips and sailing camp; during college we had regular trips to the beach on lake Michigan; I was on a swim team in grade and high school; and now my immediate family has a yearly waterpark trip we take in the Dells. Then the flood came. Water had been an inspiration and constant source of comfort, bringing memories and milestones filled with fun and family and friends, and then I was betrayed. This important part of my life became sinister. Where I used to go outside during storms, now I pace back and forth, checking the basement every 20 minutes, praying for drought. I remember the dread I felt at the end of winter simply because the water would no longer be frozen.

I've never been a traveller and have always worried this somehow narrowed my scope and negatively impacted the potential of my work. All of art history is filled with transience and tales of impermanence; artists that "found their voice" when they went abroad; immigrants who found freedom by exploring new lands. Over the last year, throughout (and because) of this series I've, for the first time, felt like the midwest environment I've grown up in is something that actually breathed life into my paintings and made them personal and truly unique to me rather than providing a barrier to more worldly exploration. Through that realization I've been growing toward embracing that and while I should probably still travel more, I can also take pride in these experiences, embrace them as my own, and begin to understand them not as a barrier but the foundation of the artist I've become. 

I still check the basement after a hard rain and I wouldn't say I am thankful for the flood, but I think it did take this negative situation for me to fully embrace what had, up to this point, been a constant, but one that was often ignored. 

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

Look...We've had a good run but I think we've been spending a little too much time together. We've had some fun times and I used to really enjoy our crazy shenanigans but the drama is starting to become a little too much. I think we need some time apart. 

In all seriousness, we could use a break from the rain...time for a little anti-rain dance featuring some flood and water themed artwork (of which I have A LOT of...maybe time for another pitch)

Most less-than-successful (financially) artists probably understand the bittersweet nature of show openings: It's exciting to see your work in a great space; it' the culmination of months of work, planning and anticipation; you might even get a good turnout and great responses...but sales can be hard to come by. Even as an artist that has had dozens of shows and tens of thousands in sales, there's a hit to your soul when you get little or nothing concrete to show for your time. I used to let this get to me (still does to a degree), and it even resulted in avoiding shows for the year or two leading up to the pandemic (funny how that worked out...) but while it's still a source of anxiety, I have begun "embracing" the inventory.

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.