statement of purpose

My father died suddenly in his sleep when my wife was in her third trimester with our first child. The next month, we had to put our 8 year-old dog, Indiana, down due to Lymphoma. This time in my life that should have been the happiest was marred by a deep sadness I could not come to reckon and in many ways still have not completely.

We often say that my oldest has an emotional maturity that most young boys do not exhibit and wonder if it’s because we went through what felt like persistent melancholy while he was in utero.

Growing up, I felt the gravity of loss in a way my own siblings and parents did not; or at least did not communicate. It was quiet and unspoken, but penetrated my being for as long as I can remember. I have been called sensitive (at times as an insult) my entire life. I often say I’m in the “sad boy club forever.”  As a child, I experienced loss even in things I never had—my mother’s parents both died when she was 17; my father, the oldest of 9, lost 3 siblings under the age of 1; and when I was 3 years old and my mother cut her hair really, really short I cried for 4 days straight. 

In kindergarten I discovered I was colorblind and it has since represented the loss of something I’ve never had the ability to see.

This constant and familiar sense of loss inspired work documenting my closest relationships—taking time to degrade the images even as they deteriorated in front of me, followed by my grad school thesis “Colorblind People are Stupid” which broke down and broke apart colorblind tests and reimagined them with intimate scenes that represented detachment and bereavement.

In January of 2020, one of my best friends succumbed to cancer after a 3 year long battle and shortly thereafter, the whole world was gutted and left lost by the havoc of a global pandemic.

Art is a means for me to confront loss—big or small—as a result, the decay of an image and the excavation of memory.