paint in order to see things that would not exist if I did not paint them.

As I get older, it gets more difficult to write about my own work. However, the less I am able to articulate what I do, the more my paintings seem to feel right.

I started drawing with ink on antique ledger pages in 2000, departing from the oil on canvas landscapes I was inventing. I love paper that has lived a life and shows its age. I use only topographic maps printed before 1940 (when a full palette of colors was introduced) and imagery from books published before photography became common.

I am intrigued by systems I do not understand and by information that is no longer relevant. Old maps, outdated textbooks and documents are a visual mine for me. I find the same family of forms in texts on cattle disease, airplane engineering, botany, the solar system. To create a place where these images can live together seems natural. The combination of excavating imagery from topographic maps and imposing found images allows me to jump in space, scale, and meaning hundreds of times in a few square inches. Scale is spiritual for me--fractal forms, echo infinitely, from the microscopic to the cosmic.

Artists like Klee, Redon, Turner, Breughel are alive for me. Byzantine and Romanesque art are alive for me. I can’t fathom why a contemporary artist would be content to be of this moment only.

In the same way that dreams do not match reality, yet contain an internal logic, I combine elements in an intuitive way, seeking relationships of form and color. Between apocalypse and paradise I seek metaphors for human hubris. The maps are a foil and a framework—the maze of lines hides figures and architecture, the printed text can be altered. But as much as I want visual harmony and a narrative for myself, I want the paintings to be a project and a puzzle for the person looking.