Automotive Art :

As a multidisciplinary painter, I find inspiration in car culture. Habitats on Earth reflect onto vehicles that cruise in those locations. Places like Los Angeles, Miami, or Dubai have flashy, often gaudy, sports cars. The U.S. countryside holds classic American muscle-cars that rust away in an old man's garage. Cuba’s streets are filled with brightly colored and well manicured vehicles from the 1950’s. Each of these cars tell a story filled with admiration and personification of the vehicle. They are rooted in their locations, yet each represents a different form of Car Culture.

 

My work amplifies the experience of vehicles as anthropomorphized objects. All vehicles have their own distinct identity which I highlight by intentionally leaving out the driver and allowing the vehicle to speak for itself as both a living and lived-in object.

 

The ambiguous landscapes allow focus on the vehicle itself, whether in water or on land, or in the real world or a dystopia. The color field in my paintings are inspired by the colors of the Florida gulf coast; i.e saturated colors like natural blues, greens, and oranges along with the appearance of palm trees and water. Having studied the iconography of Florida landscapes in much of my work, I have now begun expanding to other biomes where I link the vehicle represented into a landscape that lets it tell an enigmatic or adventurous story. 

 

Car culture is a big part of Floridian life which leads me to investigate the duality of hyper-carbon-emitting vehicles within a deeply climate-affected location. With a background in ecology and sustainability, I am just beginning this investigation of why myself and many others are so drawn to the concept of a vehicle, something that can be immediately recognized as a reason for climate change, mining, over consumption, pollution and much more.