Black Eyed Galaxy

BFA Alumni

Major: Painting

Graduation Year: 2005

Artist Statement:

Celestial events and objects are the inspiration for my most recent work. The abstract shapes, energy and colors, mesmerize and draw me in. The celestial paintings are bold yet free of associative content. It is up to the subconscious to create the connections. Vivid colors, gold and silver leaf are used to create explosions of light, movement and form. The beauty and uniqueness of these celestial events are celebrated as painted abstract worlds and moments in space in my art work.
Our earth is so precious and has so many gorgeous wonders...but sometimes I need some...space. The vastness and lack of gravity, swirling gas, ephemeral colors and lights create the perfectly unique inspiration for abstraction and mental escape. My goal is to create more beauty, more moments of peaceful and joyful interaction as well as meaningful connection building.
Oil painting has a long tradition since the middle ages...artists painted what they knew, saw and eventually what they imagined. As a 21st century artist, I have the luxury to be inspired by content and imagery that has only been known in detail beginning from the 1940’s. The images that are available now depicting black holes, nebulas, supernovas, auras, variable stars and galaxies are clearly showing colorful light, gas and objects in their stellar glory. NASA is a regular source of image reference sourcing for my paintings. I am in awe of the exquisite beauty that swirls and flies thousands of miles above our lives on earth.
An artist that I admire greatly for his unhindered pallet color choices and mastery of painting technique is Scott Naismith. Creating gaseous forms with color is his forte. To me, his paintings have an otherworldly glow and beauty. Naismith’s landscape work has provided much inspiration and guidance for my celestial paintings. Without a grasp on creating movement, volume; with interesting color pallets, of gaseous forms, my work loses depth and the opportunity to become lost...in space.
Without modern photography, internet and scientific breakthroughs I may never have discovered the inspiration and information that I used to create my paintings. In 1968, Andy Warhol said that "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." With the technology available today we are connected more than ever, have endless opportunities for communication and learning and yet people continue to face profound loneliness, frustrations and lack of genuine connections. My paintings serve as the outlet for myself in their creation/presence and, I hope, for others as the respite from technology overload. ‘Space’ can be art jargon, it can be where we go when we need to get away from stress in our busy lives and it is also what has provided the materials of our lives here on earth and ultimately for my artwork. Carl Sagan has the last word with this quote which embodies my thoughts about why I have created this body of work.
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” ― Carl Sagan
Viewers, I hope, will stand in front of my work and lose themselves in the unknown that is so intriguingly beautiful, unusual and powerful.