Artist Statement - Full Spectrum Dominance
In my work, I examine connections between landscape painting and contemporary socio-political concerns, specifically U.S. power and imperialism. Recently, my attention has been increasingly drawn to the near omni-presence of the U.S. military-industrial complex, whose tentacles often stretch into areas of our culture that we imagine to be innocuously civilian. My interest in this gray area between civilian and military life has led me to missile parks and NASA sites, where I collected much of the source imagery for the paintings in this show. More specifically, most of this imagery is connected to aspects of ‘pure’ scientific and technological exploration that resulted in violent applications. The title “Full Spectrum Dominance” comes from the conceptual framework of a strategic U.S. military doctrine authored in 2000, which proposed success for the United States in the 21st century through military supremacy “in all domains—space, sea, land, air and information.” For me, this phrase not only conjures powerful visual associations but also harkens back to Manifest Destiny and frighteningly continues its outlook and legacy.
To address these conceptual concerns, my paintings reflect varied levels of representation; some areas are tightly rendered and others are painted more loosely with nonsensical marks, reflections, saturated colors, and/or inverted imagery. Works have visual elements that might be familiar but not immediately nameable, where it is unclear whether the viewer is looking up, down, sideways, from the air or under water, aiming to provoke feelings of alienation and domination. Using space, color and texture, I draw attention to issues of surface and substance—what is real, what is made up, and how media affect what we see and how we see it. In my work, imagery often vies with formal qualities for viewers’ attention; likewise bright colors battle their opposites, blacks and grays. By emphasizing tension, I hope to raise questions about the inherent tensions between an artwork’s subject matter and its representation. I choose to make paintings that are about conflict and to make those paintings in ways that exhibit some internal struggle—where each aspect of a painting (i.e., materials, imagery, even my presence evidenced by composition or mark-making) struggles to assert itself and in so doing stimulates viewers to (re)consider associations.