Surreal Narratives from Natural Building Blocks

No matter how surreal or fantastic my pieces finish up, they nearly always start with natural forms. The shapes of insects, plants, bones, fossils etc. are all building blocks I use to create composition and meaning in my pieces. I particularly like to juxtapose or modify these forms in ways that leave trace memories of the original while creating something new and unexpected. Building such images creates narratives that can be interpreted in many ways by the viewer. In the piece below, AURA, the shape of the head recalls the body of a beetle. The fungal forms behind the figure suggest the roiling surface of the sun.

My love of natural forms developed early in life. I grew up at the tip of Lake Huron and nature was all around me. A lot of my earliest drawings were of insects. It wasn’t unusual to encounter stag beetles, moths or praying mantises on the way to school. Sadly, I see fewer of these creatures now. I hope they are not victims of the “Insect Apocalypse.” A lot of my work sits at the intersection of the natural world and consciousness. I like to imagine that a hypothetical visitor from another world could look at these images and learn something about both.

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