Using an old sketchbook drawing as a prompt, I have been cannibalized thumbnail sized marks from the drawing in order to create new forms. The process begins simply by photocopying and enlarging areas of the sketch then using the enlargements for collage material. The collaging process consists of redrawing, slicing out, and combining shape relationships. I describe the collages as maquettes. The maquettes feel like an evolved state of the original sketch. At this stage in the working process it feels as if I am splicing genes and creating a hybrid of the desirable traits of one abstract relationship into another.
The maquettes are then scanned and brought into the computer where they are adjusted digitally in order to serve as a template for a CNC Router to mill the forms out of plywood. The machine becomes an extension of the drawing process. The thumbnail sized marks become a physical object transformed in scale and material.
The plywood forms become a substrate that is then painted. The surface built up with layers of paint that are scrapped, sanded, and scored revealing layers color. The color choices are direct reaction and improvisation to the physicality of the construction. The color range can vary from highly chromatic to leaden. I view paint as a material, something that has a physical presence to it. At times the paint can seem like a patina reinforcing the physicality of the painting. Other times the color choices operate in direct contradiction to the physicality of the form. Working on a three dimensional surface frees color from the flat plane and expands the possibilities to explore new visual relationships.
Right now it is important that process come full circle. Hand to sketch-sketch to screen-screen to machine-machine to studio and back to the hand again.
I see the working process as a form of conceptual engagement. As I am working in the studio I am making abstract ideas physical. I see thinking as tied to structure. The constructions then become a tangible form that mirrors the structure of thinking. They evolve, shift, and re-contextualize like a thought does. I am inspired directly by process, form, and the beauty of abstract relationships.