Skulls

Since our first days of making art, humans have used the image of the skull to express the transience of our own mortality. From the annual interaction with the afterlife of Dios de Los Muertos, to Shakespeare's iconic stage dialog between Hamlet and the skull of Yorick, to pop culture marketing its brands, products, and memes; skull imagery and iconography stand out as one of the most universally recognizable and symbolic graphical gestures to exist. There is no need to localize, translate, or even vocalize the visual of a skull; they speak for themselves. Designing and painting this series ironically had me thinking more about present-day life to be lived than the future of non-life that is guaranteed for us all. The channels and pockets of space between the shapes in these paintings are a way for me to express how quantum physics feels to me when I consider my own time here. The art we make now can continue to live and expand its influence in our absence.

Blooms

For my plant and flower paintings I like to manipulate scale and color to help tell the story of the plant or express a meaning I've assigned to it. For instance, the scale of my painting The Last Stargazer is loaded with personal, factual, and conceptual meaning; in this case it's a flower that blooms for only 2 weeks each year and spends the rest of its time living and preparing for that moment. It made me wonder if we could be stargazers, able to resurface and enjoy the view above; an idea so clear and beautiful that it prompted an immediate painting.

Superkicks

Reframed historic moments in sports and pop culture where the performer's elevated their sponsor's brand to a new level of cultural relevance. Beyond the shoes, these paintings leave the historic stage nearly devoid of detail for us to refill in with our own memories of the moments and performers. Each of these paintings have stories related to why they impacted myself and others as athletes, artists, and fans.

Empathy Mirrors

Many people refer to these young women as heroes. However, I created the Empathy Mirrors series to offer an alternate take on who the hero could be. I propose that Malala, Greta, Emma, and others like them need help and support. Via seeing our own reflections, expanded in size via the convex mirrors, we become larger than life. You and I, with our access, influence, and empathy become the needed heroes to answer their calls.

PowerPoint Mountains

These fully scalable digital artworks were created by scribbling with an old-timey mouse in PowerPoint. Instead of trying to make these look like my paintings or other work, I decided to let these digital drawings do whatever they needed to do to express how these different locations and moments made me feel as both an artist and a mountain athlete; the lush vegetation of Hawaii during Xterra World Trail Run Championships, the jet trails over Mt Rainier while running the Wonderland Trail, and running the Aspen trail in New Mexico in the fall.

Lego Works

Since 2004 I've been creating these portraits in Lego and other mediums for collectors. For each one of the portraits, I have the assignment of making essentially 44 x 44 pixel icon of someone by pushing each pixel (or brick) around to sculpt the image out of the noisy or shingled look that a photo editing program will produce on its own. The art is in taming the computer generated image and creating a piece that reflects a person more characteristically. Many collectors have commissioned childhood images of themselves and others which seems a fitting pairing of image and medium.

fROG

fROG is the alias I painted under from 1992-1999. It was a nickname given to me in my Army days that I used in college and into my late 20's. After I concluded my illustrative Adidas Babies Series in 1996, I found myself enjoying painting more gesturally and loose.