Graffiti Abstracts
This work came from a period of personal and professional transition, when I was moving into digital design while painting obsessively outside of it. Painting became a counterweight to the structure of design, a place for instinct, symbols, fragments, and raw energy. Over this first period, I created nearly 50 paintings and had four gallery shows.
Eeek!
Acrylic, pastels, paper on canvas
I fused a 1966 Batman and Robin into a single character, layered with symbols, fragments, and interruptions. It was one of my largest paintings from this period at 5ft long and was later featured in Atomic Ranch magazine. I also created a few different custom variations of the piece for clients.
VFRR
Acrylic on canvas
Like many works from this period, this painting is loose, emotive, and exploratory, more signal than resolution. It draws from a childhood head injury and the strange events that followed, including visions that would shape the course of my life.
Headlight
Acrylic and pastels on canvas, 30x60”
Drawn in part from a 1915 billboard image of a steelworker, this painting pushed into figuration while still holding onto the layered abrasion and mark-making of the earlier work. Looking back, it feels like an early glimpse of a visual language that would take years to fully emerge in my work, bringing abstraction, graffiti, and figuration into closer balance. The painting was stolen after my first show.
Forbidden Planet
Acrylic, pastels, paper collage on canvas, 24x48”
Part of a recurring science-fiction obsession and dual-figure theme I explored across a number of paintings. Earlier versions now feel like experiments leading to this one, where that split presence became more fully realized.
We Are Going Somewhere
Acrylic & pastels on canvas, 48x24”
Paintings shaped by dream fragments, early visions, and half-remembered imagery were a big theme for me. Rather than resolving into a single scene, it pulls together scraps of text, figures, symbols, and atmosphere as if trying to catch something just before it disappears.
Weird Science
Acrylic & pastels on canvas, 48x24”
Rather than beginning with a fixed idea, I often approached painting in this period through searching, exploration, and a kind of automatic process. This piece grew that way, starting with a few colors or symbols and layering from there. I would respond to what surfaced, covering, revising, and letting accidents stay if they carried energy, until the image found a strange but instinctive balance. What I was after was not polish, but a sense of internal coherence that felt discovered rather than imposed.