ABOUT THE WORK
“Painting is like observing through a broken mirror, revealing something you’ve been looking at without really seeing.“
My work seeks to understand the human condition, by fracturing the walls that divide the inner and outer selves.
Perhaps that’s the inspiration of my hypnotherapist mom, who taught me to look into the unconscious to find the truth. Perhaps that’s because my own heart was split open young, and in that chaos of pain and inspiration, something beautiful climbed out.
Like everyone else, I have worn many faces and been many things, some of which are the me I want to be, some the me I want to leave behind, and some the me I have not yet experienced.
It’s possible that my art is about disentangling or healing those parts. It's possible it’s about weaving them together. It’s possible it’s just about examining them. If I knew exactly what it meant, I wouldn’t need to make it. Or at least I wouldn’t need to make it this way.
What matters for me in art, and in life, is the process. And for me, that process begins with simply looking, closely, closely, closely at what is, reacting honestly as I can to what is in front of me, attempting to let go of preciousness and the desire to make something be a certain way, making bold choices, out of love and daring rather than safety and preservation, and trusting that the picture that is meant to be will emerge.
About The Artist
I stumbled inadvertently into visual arts as an undergraduate at Dartmouth College (at the time I was convinced I couldn’t draw a stick figure), and began a journey that would bring him some of the greatest mentors of my life, and grow a part of me I did not know existed.
I learned to think like an artist from Esmé Thompson, how to think like a set designer from Georgi Alexi-Meskhishvili, how to think like a writer from Peter Parnell, how to think like a director from Jerry Zaks, and how to think like a painter from Joe Blaustein.
Today, I teach the process of writing to a new generation of artists at my screenwriting school, Jacob Krueger Studio, and through my Write Your Screenplay Podcast. But in my own art, I enjoy being a perpetual student. I’m proud to be a resident artist at RPAC Gallery in Ridgefield.