o_prior 2017

Before I was able to come up with a system for keeping track of my thinking and process, I thought my studio was "schizophrenic" (maybe it still is). I'd feel my desires shifting through wildly different modes and wonder why I couldn't have the same semblance of focus that so many of my peers had. I think something happened to me which prevents me from that focus. Like an ice block melting in the street on a hot summer day -- I'll never be able to un-melt myself (some have said that's also what it means to start thinking Zen).

Looking at my overall trajectory it makes sense. I felt my first deep sense of passion for my vocation when I started studying the figure. I became enamored with my skill and titillated by doing something naughty (I grew up in a very oppressive environment). It wasn't until I went to college that this infatuation was broken. I studied with painter, Frank Galuszka, at UC Santa Cruz. His class was simple: complete 30 paintings in 8 weeks. I initially tried to complete the assignment by painting in a way I already knew: a laborious, detail oriented manner with oil from life, and 5 weeks in I had only finished a few pieces. I had to abandon everything I knew in order to finish - and somewhere in the madness of literally tearing things apart in frustration and sewing them back together in agonizing grief for having set myself back, I found my unshakeable love for material-heavy abstraction. And for a number of years that was the thing for me to do - until I went to the New York Studio School. I couldn't help but fall back in love with working from life -- and that's where my true crisis began.

I love everything so much it hurts.

The following are approximately chronological works leading up to 2107 (from the limited supply of documented pieces of that timeframe). Sizes are also approximate.