Balance/Imbalance

I’ve always worked with a narrative in mind and mostly in series, like a collection of poems or short stories. This current series of paintings came to me as I was trying to balance myself in a yoga pose called “Warrior 3.” I started thinking about the mental gymnastics necessary for me to try to find calm, to breathe, to clear my mind of whatever storm was happening outside. I fell out of the pose, but those few moments of imbalance and balance, that see-sawing yin and yang, became the dialogue that I wanted to impart to my paintings.

Very often I’ll decide on an idea for a painting based on something I’ve experienced: a piano being lowered out of a brownstone window (“Bree’s Pigeon”), watching the flooding street outside my studio window (“Still Life with more Frequent Flooding and a Warrior 2”), from the subject’s own lives (“Boxes with a Bow”, “Shannon’s Handstand”), other artists ( “Fall of Man” was influenced by Caravaggio and Jusepe de Ribera), and whatever is happening in the larger world always creeps in ( “Self-Portrait,” “Bent’s Chair,” “Jametria’s Pose”).

An idea drifts, plants itself in my head, and begins to take root. Sometimes that means I have to die a tiny bit, scraping away at my edges, giving pieces of myself to the soil, until finally the process nourishes, giving back a creative direction, and an identity.

A painting of a man as a shelf full of stored garbage falls onto him.

"Fall of Man" oil on canvas 40" x 40" 2025 $4500.00

Sometimes I'll look for inspiration while sitting in my studio paging through art books. A book on Caravaggio had a painting by Jusepe de Ribera, "Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence." The pose of the primary figure is awkward and uncomfortable, but settled compositionally so my eye moved lower right to upper left. I stole that idea and ran with it.

A painting of a man sitting outside in front of a picket fence with a smiley face bag on his head.

"Self Portrait" oil on canvas 24" x 24" 2025 $1500.00

This painting was from 2018, but I dug it out when I started going through a personal crises, but at the same time thinking about being helpless, voiceless, people unable to breathe. I wanted to utilize the dichotomy of a person calmly seated for a portrait in an unsettling situation.

A painting of two young men on the F train in Brooklyn, NY.

"Hudson and Jake on the F Train" oil on canvas 24' x 24" Commissioned portrait

"Jametria's Pose" oil on canvas 36" x 24" $1500.00

This portrait was originally done just because of how she likes to stand around casually in that pose, but after many iterations it became about not being able to escape from outside events. She is trying to relax on vacation, but cannot breathe. A storm is coming, the kite can fly, but not away.

Portrait of a man sitting on a chair. He has a prosthetic leg and their is a bag on his head.

"Brent's Chair" oil on canvas 30" x 24" $1500.00

Partially because of our inadequate healthcare system Brent's undiagnosed diabetes almost killed him, but he remains strong and defiant in his new version of paradise.

Painting of a male figure in sweatpants balanced in a yoga pose in front of a wildfire.

"Evan's Dancer (Wildfire Imbalance)" oil on canvas 67" x 50" $6,000.00

Evan has found his center in "Dancer Pose," but his stage is the unbalance of the California Wildfires and climate change, the proverbial canary in the coal mine already dead at his feet.

Balance/Imbalance

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