The Little Things

What happens when you slow down and take a close look at something you might not normally give a second glance? What are the little details that you wouldn’t normally notice? All of my paintings come from small, happenstance moments. Something that happened to catch my eye, causing me to stop and take notice. In these moments I take a picture, and use that picture as a reference for a painting. Painting allows me to spend time with these moments, helping me push past the composition and into the paint- where the search unfolds and never ends. Suddenly new happenstances surface in each painting. How the pigments layer, the textures pull, or the shapes shift. Another painting comes from this. Paint helps me see, and seeing helps me paint. In each step of this process something of the original subject matter is lost and something else is gained. The materiality of paint, brushwork as a subject, color and gesture freed from the job of depicting. In this way I use paint as a microscope, exploring further into compositions to discover what was invisible before.

Installed in the 2026 Senior Thesis Exhibition at Gallery 406 at Elon University. May 8th- May 22nd.