I am painting from the perspective of a man who loves men. My romantic life is very important to me. A lot of gay paintings might be seen as being horny and pornographic, and while I accept that there is an element of that in my work, I think my paintings are really about love - loving a moment in time, loving a person, loving a body, loving a relationship. The reason I want to paint someone I’m in love with is because I realize that this energy between us won't last forever, or maybe it will, I hope it does, but I know it won’t. Maybe I can capture this fleeting feeling that feels better than anything I’ve ever felt before. I know I've captured it before and it’s completely gone now.
Painting, for me, is about looking very closely. When I spend hours staring at another human, I begin to notice new details about them: The shape of their eyes, the redness in their eyelids holding light, their skin tone and the way it alternates between warm and cool. I feel an emotional connection to the person I am painting that becomes deeper over time. There is a vulnerability that unfolds when someone is naked posing in front of me. I imagine it might feel uncomfortable and potentially threatening as my subjects understand that I am looking at them in a way that no one ever has. I can see every pore on their skin, but I’m not judging them. I am seeing a beautiful creature sitting in front of me. Feelings of sexual tension arise, but I also experience innocent feelings that resemble a crush. This makes my paintings feel sexy to me. When I stare at a person for this long, I’m reminded of how beautiful but simple life is and how nothing outside of the present moment matters, it’s just us sitting in this room, with no other thoughts going through my brain. It’s really beautiful to me to think how in a few years, this person’s body could be completely different, or they might not even be alive anymore. To capture something from life in this very moment is a special thing to me, and nothing else makes me feel like this.
I am most recently invested in painting light, air, weather, mist, and mood in an attempt to bring forth the emotion seen through the figure’s facial expression and body language. I do this by attending to the space around the figure. By closely paying attention to the edge where the figure and the background meet, carefully mixing that specific color at that moment of transition allows the air to deepen around the figure. This building of density, alongside giving attention to the darks, attending to how the viewer’s eye moves around, and painting the relationship of each color in reality, allows me to set up a space where a palpable heaviness is present. Such consideration of the atmosphere has the power to draw the viewer deeper into the painting. The brush strokes and looseness in my paintings allows a sense of movement. By working quickly, I find myself overthinking less. Procedurally mixing color next to color comes more naturally, instinctively. The speed of my arm mirrors the wind of the atmosphere, capturing a feeling and fluidity, rather than depicting reality with pinpoint accuracy.