Anomalies of a living atmosphere, processed through a human body.
My lifelong painting practice is constantly shifting, always with the intention to simplify conditions and materials. I work mostly outside, incorporating and accommodating natural phenomena (ice, wind, earth, organic material) as the work takes shape. I’m interested in the way the outside world and its conditions affect my paintings, and want my paintings to represent and reflect anomalies of the living atmosphere, as processed through my human body, and carried out through my human mind.
I’m also interested in working with fixed conditions and geometric parameters within my paintings. This is also an effort at mimicking natural phenomena: experimenting with the edge of texture, color, and coherence utilizing the most fundamental shapes. My large-scale portal paintings began as an attempt to capture simple environmental phenomena—planetary bodies in conditions such as cloud patterns, ocean sunsets, snowstorms, wildfire smoke, and solar eclipses. Loosely based on the Japanese Enso, these paintings became a form of meditation as well. Simple compositions that aren’t really as simple as they seem.
While I have previously worked with materials like acrylics and gouache, I’m currently most interested in painting with nontoxic and natural pigments, watercolors, plasters, and other earth-friendlier materials. I want my materials to be traceable and biodegradable, able to return back into the ecological ecosystem without consequence.
Below is a selection of paintings made with/as Omo Studio. For custom inquiries or a current list of available works, please reach out.
Shown at Western Cider, Missoula, MT.
Fall 2020-Spring 2021.
LUCID DREAM, 2020-2021
The Lucid Dream series served as a continuation of Utopia, but saw a greater exploration and disintegration of its balanced forms. These works are dreamy, hazy, dissolving, and often chaotic—a reflection of the shifting sense of reality of 2020 and a visual mantra for holding disparate elements in a delicate, powerful balance.
Shown at Old Clyde, Missoula, MT.
Fall and Winter 2019.
UTOPIA, 2019
Utopia is shorthand for sensibility and ease, a future world of symmetry, meaning and beauty. This series of large-scale works balanced stable and meditative forms with dynamic texture and color, creating high-vibrational portals through which I hoped their viewers could briefly disappear.
Selected Portals, 2018-2024.