My work focuses on the spectrum of human emotion through imagery of surreal, often grotesque, figures being distorted and transformed. The raw scenes act as a literal translation of what's inside of us all. By dissecting the human body and revealing what's underneath the skin, I am able to metaphorically show what it is like to battle one's own uncontrollable chaos.

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I primarily work with oil paint on canvas, as its flexibility allows for me to create a dramatized figure through rich colors, harsh lighting and contorted poses. To create these scenes I take staged reference photos of myself and draw them into complex positions directly on the canvas. I try to balance how much is taken from reference and how much is my intuition by moving fluidly through subconscious imagination to shape the final image. The result is a semi-convinicing scene grounded in anatomy but lacking all real logic. 

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I am inspired by the dark media I consumed as a child. Growing up I was exposed to 80s and 90s Sci-Fi and horror movies because they were my fathers favorite movies. “Alien”, “Hellraiser”, “Akira” and even “The Necronomicon” by H.P. Lovecraft became movies and books I loved as well. My other major influence came from medical books that belonged to my father. Some books showed basic dissection and others showed diseases that affect humans. I am very desensitized to these images and it has created a morbid curiosity in me. It is what has caused my interest in distorting the human figure and not holding back on how graphic it is. I have now started to create associations with the way the body looks and the emotions it feels. Instead of trying to understand these phenomena in the body I let my curiosity fly and distort it more.