Works in progress, drawings for a series of paintings, fall September 2025

One way I understand these images is as scenes from a youth group. A youth group of young people gathered formally and informally within a Protestant faith and the settings common to their culture. I do think there are interests here for me that are also broader and more basically American– a poverty of beauty, a yearning for mystery but an unwillingness to protect or inhabit it, yearnings for communion but so much detachment. I’m interested in these still scenes and empty settings where formidable years play out in the gap between what ideals are confessed and what behavior is lived out. In these scenes there are signs of dysphoria, but also glimpses of transcendence, a reminder of the unavoidable paradoxes of Christianity and the human condition.