My current body of work is composed of a series of small, realist landscape paintings that have a slightly exaggerated and romanticized use of color. This romanticism of color is a means of holding places to a greater fidelity to my memory of them.

I'm also making a series of small, monochrome portraits using aquatint and lithography printmaking techniques. The purpose of this separation of medium and subject matter lies in the ability of the work to have a clear, visual divide, as a way to control how it informs itself and the viewer. I invite the viewer to consider the implications of medium and subject specificity, while insisting that the apparent eclecticism is not indicative of separate bodies of work.

On a recent trip to my hometown—Aurora, NE—I had a compelling and nostalgic experience. I saw that place as incubation for my identity—the relationships, the experiences and everything else that connected me to it.

Thousands of people from many generations claimed Aurora as their hometown with a sense of ownership to that place. All of them refer to anecdotal experiences that most of the others did not share. Even in the five years since I left, Aurora has significantly changed. Buildings have been constructed, altered, and razed.

New people live in the places I called home, and I in theirs. The school I went to is familiar but wholly different, altered, adapted. Geography and relationships are both dynamically changing matrixes that serve the construction of individual identities.

I'm using my work as a way to think about and explore my history, its consequence on others and their consequence on me. I'm offering it back as a semi-digested, celebratory remark on the complexity, elegance, and brilliance of our existence.