Work Statement

I had a normal American childhood; I am a child of divorce, a Jew with a born-again Christian extended family, an immigrant father from England, and another father who was a Marine. Growing up in the presidential hometown of Hyde Park, New York, American exceptionalism feels like home when you live down the road from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's estate. When I pass the drive-in theater next to our 1950s-themed diner, reflecting on my coming-of-age moments feels like they belong to someone else, a generation that had not experienced the after-effects of 9/11, the Internet, or a broken political atmosphere until well-after adulthood. My work is for those who feel this same sense of societal dread, but do not want to let that define their future. How can life more bleak now than the drop of the atomic bomb? In therapy, we are taught to reflect on our childhood for context. Themes of nostalgia and youth are very potent in my work, sourcing imagery from cigarettes, clowns, coming-of-age films, comics, construction sites, coloring book pages, and a primary color palette shared by Modernists and children alike as I try to work through these ideas of being “normal” in this hazy vision of America. Done in a juvenile hand, I focus on moments that are integral to my understanding of the adult world, juxtaposing them with these adolescent aesthetics, often blurring the lines between naive and mature themes, taking subtle approaches with subjects such as one’s loss of innocence, substance usage, and sexuality.