My work is landscape-based, rooted in a subtle exploration of humanity’s complex relationship with nature and, by extension, with itself. I employ formal devices such as restricted color palates, careful consideration of the tensions between grounds and selective use of line and shape to further the dialog between aesthetics, content, and form. What results in the work is my own unique visual system, imbued with cultural, natural, and scientific context from my travels all over the world

In addition, a less tangible layer of subtext exists in the work which engages the viewer in a critical discourse about the nature of photography: the contradiction of presenting the inevitable (arti)facts of a mechanical medium that by nature can only ever be part of the picture. A quote from Mike Davis’ Dead Cities, “But that isn’t real the way that real things are real” is an important touchstone for my work. As a counterpoint, I am also interested in the notion of the unveiling of extant Truth – in other words, presenting something that one instinctively recognizes to be true, yet cannot name until it has been revealed as such.

I am currently engaged in creating two major bodies of work, Lost In Paradise and The Oldest Living Things in the World. Lost In Paradise is a body of lush landscape work subtly addressing the complexity of natural beauty while asking for the consideration of construction and destruction, desire and loss. The work functions within a framework that presupposes free will, and the loss as a perceived or self-imposed one, allowing for either a search for meaning or, conversely, a willful misinterpretation of that which is already obtained. Lost in Paradise is meant to comment on the contemporary zeitgeist via a landscape that is as seductive as it is overlooked.

In my ambitious interdisciplinary project “The Oldest Living Things in the World,” I find myself researching far outside my field in areas such as mycology, dendrochronology and microbiology in order to travel around the world to make photographs of the oldest continuously living organisms on the planet. This process involves corresponding and working in the field with scientists in plant and planetary biology in order to identify and locate these organisms. My subjects, living in nearly 20 different countries, include over 30 different organisms ranging from trees to predatory fungus to ancient bacteria. This contemporary, interdisciplinary approach has the potential to shed light on the intersection of science with philosophy and belief via an artistic framework. Further, the work is generating a dialogue amongst scientists whose research is otherwise too specialized to provide a comprehensive picture of global species longevity. These themes of longevity, sustainability, the natural sublime and mortality are inherent to the subject matter, which the viewer is encouraged to explore along with implicit sociological and philosophical constructs.