Welcome to the jungle, baby

2019
Acrylic, oil and spray paint on panel
34.5" × 52.5"

This painting is inspired by an overgrown patch I photographed in my father’s garden.  The wildness of an unkempt plot that could challenge the beauty of any rose was full of possibility.  The challenge for me was: can I make a landscape painting that feels edgy?  The intersection of high and low has been an interest in my work for some time—hand painting in oil, and the traditional nature of the subject, versus the method of spray painting with its spatters, overspray, and the flatness of stencils. Weeds as subject present a kind of challenge to highly manicured spaces whose formality, in and of themselves, are an intrinsic justification for being.  This patch grows ecstatically, and unapologetically in rural Maine, where low-brow culture regularly jars against a legacy of coastal wealth.

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