Patients [2009–24]
The inferno of a horrific auto accident took the lives of my closest friends the same afternoon my wife and I were dancing in celebration at our brother’s wedding reception. Living through a decade of unexpectedly losing numerous family members and dear friends, I paint portraits of hospitalized individuals to make sense of our capacity for hope in the face of incomprehensible tragedy. Watercolor is a fragile medium, full of abstract puddles and often uncontrollable, , so I take control by repainting the forms as solidified structures in large scale acrylic and oil paintings. Likewise, we cannot entirely make sense or extract meaning from near-death situations; there is always a tension between the depiction and our own mortality. I confront this by engaging with patients of intensive care units who are unseen and quarantined from the public.

“Such a caring for death, an awakening that
keeps vigil over death, a conscience that looks
death in the face, is another name for freedom.”
― Jacques Derrida, author of The Truth in Painting