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Im·plic·it Signal
Implied though not plainly expressed.
Essentially or very closely connected with; always to be found in.
With no qualification or question; absolute.
A few months ago I saw what seemed like thousands of crows flying in from the mountains outside my window. I walked out and stared in amazement for thirty minutes. They multiplied, moved in a seemingly organized fashion, and then dispersed as the sun set. I was taken by the beauty and strangeness of the moment, and although I have had enough distance to rationalize their appearance, I fear that the crows came to warn of the apocalypse. Perhaps we should all be bracing for some impact.
My work is guided by the notion that “truth is stranger than fiction”. It has been said that there is nothing more frightening to us than the things we cannot account for, the things we have no ability to explain. I have dealt with a longstanding fear of this nameless thing; the thing that abides by no logic, and would distort your mind if you were to know it truly.
The more that I live within the world, the less that I come to understand it. We have witnessed atrocities that no logic can justify, made far worse by our inability to acknowledge them. We conflate undeniable realities with conspiracy, and deny what is in front of us. This has led to me a place of extreme paranoia and skepticism for others. It is increasingly difficult to have faith in the world when the moral laws that make us human no longer take precedent. As my faith in the world weakens, I find I am more receptive to subliminal messages. A deer in the road at night, my dog barking at an invisible presence, and a murder of crows all convey a warning — in part because I have already accepted that I need to be warned.
The painting Alien Observer depicts a window that acts as a threshold between two figures. Reflected in the glass is the murky image of a woman inside of the house. Outside the window sits an owl who is flush to the glass and staring back at the woman. There is dark unoccupied space above the two figures, and it becomes hard to distinguish if we are looking into a dark home or out to the night sky. The figures appear to acknowledge one another, but we witness no action taken within the painting, and are instead stuck in the middle of an uncomfortable and silent confrontation.
Trail Cams (2024)
In my Trail Cam series several deer move in the night and therefore in secret. In the privacy of darkness, the deer behave in strange ways; some stand on their hind legs, two create a mirror image of one another, and others move too quickly for the camera to pick up the detail of their faces. The deer often keep their distance from the camera, and appear half-swallowed by darkness. Those that get closer, however, become distorted by the lens — overexposed by the camera and rendered featureless. It is as if there is no way to experience the truth of these moments through the trail cam footage, as something occurs that the camera can’t quite pick up.
Girls [Previous Works]
A working title for this collection of stand-alone works created from 2021-2023
