Narrative realism in watercolor

My work is about mortality, fragility, and thwarted desire. My images also find dark humor in the trials of living in a world filled with lethal hazards. The fact that many of the players in these desktop existential dramas are mere insects does not detract from their modest grandeur. In fact, the scale of these paintings is such that a wealth of normally hidden detail is revealed. Derived from my own studies of the fauna “native” to my studio and adjacent outdoor work space, these pictures uncover the hidden beauty and potential pathos of a world that is all too often overlooked -- that is, when it is not being inadvertently crushed underfoot.

Watercolor has a reputation as a medium given to splashy spontaneity, yet these paintings are carefully planned and tightly rendered in intricate detail, with photographic blurring and vignetting simulated for a shallow-focus “bug’s eye view” effect. Yet the unpredictable and unforgiving nature of the medium still manages to prevent the result from being entirely photo-realistic. Each painting is the record of a performance, with subtle textures, paint blooms and stain borders that reveal the story of a laborious and very personal artistic process.

Much of my work to date has been concerned with moments of heightened awareness, moments that seem to resonate with significance, like those one experiences in an epiphany, déjà vu, or in a moment of crisis. Another similar sensation is that familiar existential vertigo -- the fleeting yet giddy intensity of a moment brought into excruciating focus by a suddenly re-awakened awareness of life’s limited duration. Like my imperiled insect subjects, our ultimate fate may depend on cruel or indifferent forces largely beyond our control. But rather than stepping back for perspective on this intolerable truth, these new works step forward, to peer closely at the minute inhabitants of the corners and cracks in my own art practice.