This series of studio art works concerns fragmentation. “We’re so divided,” many people told me when I returned to the US in 2017 after living abroad for seven years. I was interested in this idea but instead of political, social, or cultural aspects I wanted to get closer to the source. I wanted to examine not just how we get information, but how we gather the most fundamental sensory stimuli and make use of them. How often do they flow from a single, unified, natural source and how often are they stripped apart, artificial, disparate, stranded? And how do these divisions affect our ability to observe, perceive, reason, and judge? These are the kinds of questions I was thinking about as I developed this series of paintings.

I have always looked for quiet places to get away from distractions and annoyances. Sometimes it was a library or gym, but more often it was a bike trail or a hiking trail or a wetland or a lakeshore. In the last couple of years it has mostly been the studio — a place where I can be myself and also lose myself. I also found in these years that I wasn’t just taking refuge in the space, but in the materials themselves. I lost my self in experiencing the pure visceral push and pull of seeing the way paint takes to paper, the way ink spreads across a panel, the way paint mixes itself on the brush and on the canvas, the way lines and clouds and fields of color take form.