My work disrupts the familiar.
I take portraits and break them apart—layering, distorting, and rebuilding until something else shows up.
What I’m after is what’s not immediately visible. The tension, the fracture, the parts we don’t usually see in ourselves.
I’m not trying to make something polished.
I’m interested in imperfection—in the wabi-sabi sense of it. The idea that what’s incomplete or unresolved is often more honest.
Process
I work with an iPhone and my hands.
I shoot the original portrait. Or work from images shared with me. Either way, the starting point is just that—a starting point.
I break the image down—physically and digitally. Crumpling, folding, layering textures and fragments that don’t belong together. Over time, the image shifts into something new.
I don’t use AI. Everything is constructed by hand.
The final work sits somewhere between photography, painting, and collage. It’s still a portrait, but it doesn’t behave like one.
My story
I didn’t set out to become an artist. But on February 11th, 2004, my life split in two. I was sitting in the Seattle Art Museum, watching Christian Marclay’s Video Quartet—four seemingly random videos stitched together in perfect synchronicity. In that moment, something in me cracked open. I realized I wasn’t living my life. I was sleepwalking.
I was a partner at a design firm, "successful" on paper, but the work left me cold. So, I quit. I threw myself into the void. I didn’t know where I was headed, only that I had to make art that didn’t just speak to people’s minds, but ripped open their perceptions of what is.
After years of juggling day jobs, I kept coming back to my art. I wrote a novel about a clueless life coach who uses his grandfather’s ashes to help lost souls find their spirit animals. I launched podcasts and even took the stage for a one-man comedy show.
Then, 15 years ago, I found my stride—photography, digital manipulation, paint, and mixed media came together in a way that felt like me. The results are raw, dimensional, and evolving. My work isn’t just about seeing—it’s about sparking something deep inside, something you didn’t know was there until you looked. That’s the art I create now. The kind that looks you straight in the eye and says, "This is you."