gonna build me a log cabin on a mountain so high

In the field of my brain, there is a vast garden of plants waiting to be watered. These plants take many bizarre forms: some are tall, others short, some striped, others ripped, and a few with tiny multicolored flowers. This is the place where my creative process begins, where I cultivate and fertilize my thoughts. My artwork begins as a tiny seed of an idea, planted somewhere in the deep dirt of my cortex. Soon this seed sprouts, and a couple of twisted spores erupt out of the seed's surface.

Before I choose my materials, I must first have a concrete idea of what I want to address in a piece. This may range from a number of feelings I have (these usually revolve around some sense of loss) to personal experiences of mine: in that sense, all of my work is extremely intimate and makes me vulnerable. The resulting sincerity, I believe, allows me to create my sincerest work.

Once I have a concrete concept, I begin thinking about what possible materials, and, perhaps more significantly, what process I can use to communicate said concept. Indeed, I generally believe the creative process to be the most important part of the work: I consider all of my work to be performative, and for the resulting piece (the painting, for instance) to be the result of my performance. The art itself lays in my own doing. For that reason, I view my materials as a means to get to some pre-desired destination (i.e. concept-land).

I am most easily recognized as a painter as that is the area in which I have the most "organized" experience, but I would never primarily identify myself as that. As I feel about most labels, I believe the term to be reductive and borderline pejorative. Though I frequently use paint in my work, I am no stranger to other media. Paint is just as much a mark-making tool to me as any other than I may employ, like a paintbrush. That said, I've been known to use a number of materials such as plastic bags, sticks, tubes, glass, and spray bottles to apply paint in different ways. This in turn allows me to add different textures and effects to my painted pieces.

When making non-representation art, I prefer to use paint as I feel it is amongst the most easily manipulated mediums. I try to follow in the footsteps of the great abstract expressionists before me -- Joan Mitchell, Jane Frank, and Clyfford Still to name a few of my favorites -- who sought to capture a particular moment rather than a specific image. As referenced above, such paintings become a form of documentation of my movement, and in that way, preserve and deify my act.

Still, only a portion of my work follows the nonrepresentational theme. I am also extremely interested in incorporating sound in my work, both lyrical (involving discernable spoken word, that is) and abstract. This brings an element of installation to my work, which inevitably leads me to more materials. In the last two years, I have been pick up and collect things obsessively -- small things; stupid things; things like my toenail clippings that I keep in a mason jar and humble pile of letter buttons from broken BlackBerry phones. I consider no substance to be off-limits, and I imagine that I will eventually have a use for any collected material.

photo above: Moose by Lauren Schleider, acrylic on canvas, 2007
photo courtesy of the artist