Grief, Truth and Lies

These three themes have run through my work for the last twenty years. I’ve had to come to terms with deep, sudden and powerful loss in my life of some of the most important people one can have. Additionally, many of the bonds that seemed to define me were broken and I was forced to accept and normalize betrayal on a level I had never imagined. These things became the source for so many works during the intervening years.

Grief

At least twice in my life I have lost people who were part of my inner circle suddenly and without warning, my mother first and then my youngest brother. In both situations, I was aware of a depth of feeling so dark and without light that I felt I could never recover from it. These paintings came directly from my experience of that grief. They are elaborations on both the grandness and simplicity of deeply felt grief.

Letters to Andrew

On February 7, 2016, my youngest brother, Andrew, died suddenly of a heart attack while mountain biking near his home. This shock to me and my family is something that will stay with us forever. As I started trying to manage the inconsolable grief that ensued, I found myself drawing letters to Andrew to help me express my feelings. These drawings are heartfelt letters of grief, sorrow, loss and ultimately of redemption. They are each individual, as feelings tend to be, but draw the same set of underlying complex relationships with them. Andy will remain a part of my life, and of my art, forever. These works are a way of ensuring that.

Truth & Lies

The lie can be assumed, the truth often obscure. Do photographs really show us the ‘truth’? And do paintings ‘lie’? What of a painting of a photograph or a photograph of a painting? Is it art? Our entire process for living is founded on some fundamental lies, lies which make life easier and simpler but lies nonetheless. The fact of art is so often a process of lying to reveal the truth. A painting is can be a visual indication of some thing or some one and we take it at face value. Of course it’s the truth, all art is essentially true, even as it lies to us.