ARTIST STATEMENT
Informed by a study of still life painting and an aversion of hierarchical structure, I embark on a study of the pile, heap, mound, or stack. Piling itself is the habit of a collector, an accumulator, a chronicler. I speak of retention and repetition. My drawn and painted piles are composed of a shifting lexicon of objects to be stacked, stuffed, or otherwise composed into the triangular/conical form that connotes a mound of carelessly dropped foodstuffs and discards. This lexicon of objects points to an interest in classical notions of still life, vanitas, or nature morte as well as a more contemporary notion of repetitive labor borrowed from minimalist and performance art.
I frame the still life in terms of my habitual feelings of guilt. In assembling drawn images of Black Forest cakes, pies, and hams, the heaping of exhausted sweat and meat, amputees and pin-ups, a profusion of grapes and sliced fruit, severed heads, politicians, deer, flags, guns, and skulls, I am lacing these works with a chronicle of decadent disorder as it functions socially and politically. In building piles of delicacies and carcass I lampoon my own disorder and compulsion, a self-eating deadpan gesture of dread and complacency. I critique excess through the filter of my own overindulgence. My German heritage, fascination with the morality tale, telling flirtation with works of decadence and cornucopias, and personal filter of an eating disorder, all play into this search for a manner of working that insinuates both critique and complicity within contemporary moments of atrocity.