I began experimenting with oil paints as an artistic medium in 2016. Though it would be several more years before I could do more than paint in my free time every few months. Still, my love for painting and an appreciation for a diverse representation of western landscapes grew as I studied Western American history. I happily took breaks from writing in Bozeman by walking through downtown galleries where I became captivated with the works of artists like Clyde Aspevig, Scott Christenson, Tucker Smith, and Dan Metz. My focus on the 19th- and early 20th-century West also introduced me to painters such as Rungius, Bierstadt, Moran, and, of course, Charlie Russell.
While completing my doctoral coursework in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan, I underwent treatment for Hodgkin Lymphoma during 2018 and 2019. Following a successful stem cell transplant, chemo and immunotherapy, and radiation, I was cancer free by the summer of 2019. My wife and I moved back to Montana in 2020 where I began plein air painting for the first time. By 2023 with most of my dissertation complete, and with a toddler in tow, I spent more and more time painting, practicing, and studying techniques. I have loved creating art my entire life, but I am very much at the beginning of my journey as a painter. I see a deep connection between my work as an artist and as a western historian. Their paths intersect most often while I am thinking and studying how people in the present and the past have understood, made, and related to “place.”
More and more, I find that painting can be a means of contemplative recollection. People hurry, careen even, through the world. In spite of our fervor, landscapes have a way of filling our subconscious, entering by the side door. I believe a great painting is a summons to notice what is within—as well as outside—ourselves. My work tries to notice what it is that captivates us about our surroundings. In search of this, my oil landscapes explore the tensions and harmonies between subjects and space. My subjects are not just points of interest to look at, but a summons to imagine a new story or revisit an old memory. Similarly, depth is not merely an aspect of a scene to convey distance, but an invitation for the viewer to traverse the miles in their mind. My life in the mountains of Western Montana has almost compelled me to think in these ways and to pursue these ideas. Here, any moment can transform into this kind of summons-to-notice, and painting is simply the best way I know how to share that experience.
