Portfolio > The Secret Life of Machines

Lion
Oil, Collage
52" x 64"
2017
Tractor Rest
Oil
36" x 52"
2015
Tractor Lanscape
Oil
50" x 64"
2017
Guarding the Old Growth
Oil
20" x 24"
2017
Catalina
Oil
66" x 70"
2013
Night Tractor
Oil
30" x 40"
2015
Caterpillar
Oil
36" x 40"
2014
New York Steamer
oil
30" x 40"
2011
Deep Water Channel
Oil
72" x 58"
2013
The Fauvist Tractor
Oil
60" x 62"
2013
Float Plane
oil
58" x 41"
2011
Lantern
oil
54" x 43"
2011
Tractor Split
Oil
32" x 38"
2013
Steamer Fields
oil
58" x 48"
2011
Forest Tractor
Oil, Collage
2017
Marooned P-38
Oil
36" x 39"
2013
Combine
oil
47" x 44"
2011
Tractor Field Lines
Oil
24" x 36"
2017
Grandfather
Oil, Image Transfer
20" x 24"
2017
Steamer
Oil
24" x 36"
2012
Tractor Lines 2
Oil
24" x 36"
2012
Earth Coat
oil
58" x 48"
2011
Field Boss
oil
70" x 84"
2011
Crimson Thresher
Oil
34" x 48"
2013

I started painting farming artifacts nine years ago while, ironically, living in Brooklyn, New York. At the time I was already involved in a large project, a series of portraits of people in their personal work spaces, from unseen critical role players to Polly Mellen and Donna Karan, all simultaneously holding positions in both the art and fashion worlds. From time to time I would visit Sacramento and began to paint outdoors in the delta. During the sessions that followed I became increasingly aware of these agricultural machines. They seemed like sculptural sentinels dotting the landscape, like a David Smith. One day in the delta I started to paint the form of the tractor itself. The tractor manifested a powerful intimacy that suggested “many secrets” especially the older ones richly draped in rust and chipped paint. They resonated a type of insistence that indicated a kind of consciousness at work.

Another starting point for this body of work came from one of the primary visual emphases of my work, the combining of two different environments. Upon returning to the city I was haunted by the agricultural lines and crop patterns of the Central Valley. The rows of floors on the skin of a skyscraper seemed to echo the patch work grid of an orchard. Another interesting contradiction was the frenetic mental pace in response to the amount of digital input we experience in our modern lives compared to the quiet stillness and big dominating skies of farmland. I knew right off this was an area that was ripe with visual possibilities that could provide a range of work.

It has been a pleasure and privilege to create these paintings of rural/Ag environments. At the core of this body of work is “intimacy.” The way it manifests in how we inhabit rural and urban environments and to celebrate visually the interconnectedness of land and city.