AbouT
I’m an independent artist living and working in the high desert of O’gha Po’geh (so-called Santa Fe, NM). All of my artwork is created in traditional painting and drawing mediums, with the exception of using a digital tablet to draft some of my ideas and to problem-solve compositions. (I have never used generative technology in my artwork and will not be incorporating it in the future.)
The tangible process of creating traditional art has a magic to it. When I spend hours pouring energy into a physical painting, working in exchange between the artwork as it is and the piece I’m trying to create, I always find there is a presence to an original that makes it feel spirited in some way. It still feels special every time.
In recent years, in the face of more and more of our lives being pushed towards the abstract digital space and further into alienation from one another and ourselves, I think people are hungry for the tangible. For things created by human hands with human intentions, building real meaning that informs their lives in real ways.
I grew up with a love of nature and a disenchantment with the human world in the shape that I understood it to be at the time, which led me to becoming an avid lover of fantasy artwork and novels. It was my escape to worlds where nature was ever-present, and centered characters who found within themselves the best parts of the human spirit, which they used to create real change and put their world onto a path of connection and harmony.
It seemed to me that such triumphs over darkness were only possible in those fantasy worlds, but never in our own. The increasing anguish I felt at impending climate change and most people’s complete lack of engagement with it led me to pursue an understanding of why our modern world is the way that it is, and how we could change it.
Placing this pursuit at the center of my life has transformed the rest of my life around it. I came to understand more deeply that there is no such thing as a division between “humanity” and “nature”, and that our disconnect from being in reciprocity with the land and one another is at the center of enormous harm to both human and other-than-human life. The systems of colonialism, imperialism and capitalism which broke open and maintain this division are an outgrowth of historical forces, and are not somehow a “natural” feature of our human nature. On the contrary, a tremendous amount of energy and effort is constantly being spent to keep the capitalist system going in spite of how inefficient and egregious it is.
Real change of the systems that govern our lives and means of relation is not only the realm of fantasy, but can be accomplished through the shared education and courage of the masses. On the other side of overcoming and deconstructing these systems of oppression, we have the fearsome and wonderful task of re-discovering who we are and who we want to be. To choose the best parts of the human spirit and to center everything else around that.
I can’t think of a more exciting thing to pursue in my work than the journey of figuring out how to live our lives in the shape of the world we want to create, and at its best my artwork shows some humble shard of this journey, gleaned from the experiences of myself and the people closest to me as we strive to build the world we want to live in.
I hope you’ll keep tabs so we can both find out whether I manage to live up to that or not! You can find the greatest amount of my work and writing by subscribing my Patreon, which directly supports me and my found family of queer disabled communist weirdos. You can also subscribe to my newsletter below.