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Derrygereen, Skibbereen, West Cork, Ireland

 10"x12", 2021

City in Winter

 

Good Time Skateboard Co presents...

 This is the second skateboard design i have been commissioned to create by my good friend and owner of the Richmond, VA based skateboard company GoodTimeSkateboardCo. It was an honor, a challenge, and literally a dream come true to have this opportunity.

The Tiny Doctors who Stay in the Forest

 11"x14", 2018

The Listener

 3.5"x5"

The Translator

 Another Black Pearl Resident portrait, 5"x7"

The Sentimentalist

"To those who fret over their thoughts, words, and deeds..."

4"x4" 

The Percussion Within the Nest

Approx. 6x14"

Municipal Fixture no. 29

"The Attendant": a Black Pearl resident

This is the very first Black Pearl resident drawing I did. It has since fallen into the hands of an anonymous collector, reposed in its custom, handmade frame, hopefully in a dark hallway.

Witness' Face

16x20"

When the Black Pearl Cycle drawings and accompanying works are completed and displayed at the TinyATH Gallery in October 2020, this drawing will be hang opposite them, facing them, positing:

 "What if a piece of art or body of work, upon observing and experiencing it, could change the viewer, the Witness, in profound, tangible, material ways? What if the "dialogue" relaying betwixt "subject" and "object" were of such a mutagenic and disintegratory nature that the Witness, being dynamic, were molded by the static truths of the work?"

The Mining of Low Justice

14x17"

Directly inspired by a dream, this drawing differs very little from the original imagery. However, between the translation of the dream's emotive tones into "physicalities",  and subconcious influences during its creation, it became more sinister than I anticipated.

This drawing is about transgression, trespass, and stumbling upon something not meant to be seen; it is also about living tunnels, fungal caverns, and abominations wearing terrible disguises...

"I have Known you for So Long": a Black Pearl Resident

When the dream phenomenon of the Black Pearl first began to manifest, and I was wandering blindly through dark corridors which hummed vaguely with deteriorating machinery, I encountered various Residents there, going about their strange existences. The character seen above was one of the first I had direct interaction with. He seemed to recognize me immediately, and, although shy and hesitant to communicate, insinuated that we had a shared past which I did not recall.

When I awoke, I made a quick sketch of the fellow, unaware of where all of this would eventually lead. Months later, he reappeared in another dream, holding a different drawing of himself which he claimed I had sketched of him years before. Upon waking, the memory of this dream-drawing still clear in my mind, I realized that it was indeed a figure study that I had drawn in real life nearly ten years prior, long lost to memory and the wastebasket...
4.5x4.5"

Exasperating Consumption of Elder

8x10", 2017

The Old Garden

Another panoramic drawing i've recently completed. The original concept was going to be a very simple, two-dimensional garden scene, done in a style not unlike Harry Clarke. But, as how things usually go once i start the final inking, i couldn't help myself with the obsessive detailing. It ended up being completely in my "style", and  my favorite drawing of the year so far. This one has already gone to live with a collector: the buyer possesses a keen eye, and has noticed many little details that the cursory glance refuses to reveal. And that, for me, means i achieved my point.

"Orphans"

This drawing was such a pleasure to create. It is for a show at the Hotel Indigo Gallery here in Athens, Georgia, called "Tiny Universe". None of the pieces in the show are to exceed 8 inches in any direction; this one is 8"x8", exactly.

The idea for this drawing has been in my mind for well over a year now. I got the idea for it walking through my neighborhood on a cold, chilly night, and saw a conspicuous looking box under a street lamp. The light from the lamp was faltering, and my imagination was already reeling, and I got the idea of the box being filled with little, unwanted, subhumanoid creatures. When asked to be in the show, I knew immediately that this was the drawing I had to submit. Once I started putting the universe where these orphans would exist together, I realized that it was one where anything not directly in the light of the streetlamps was prone to uncanny reality, or un-reality, as it were...

Bargained Relief from the Redundant Conundrums

I feel like this particular drawing might need a bit of clarification, considering the responses I received at my recent art opening. Many people found it unnerving and depressing. This piece, like many of my drawings, is based on imagery from a dream. As the broken, despairing individual wanders a foggy, desolate landscape, his only recompense is his symbiotic partner: the creature on his back is living off of his organic fluids, his humor, if you will; in exchange, he takes the woes of his host and collects them in the bulb at the tip of his tail. He also whispers words of encouragement and succor as they navigate the wasted landscape.

Tuffelough House, At Odds

As anyone who has seen my art knows, I am mildly obsessed with pastoral landscapes with surreal aberrations. Here we have another: a dilapidated farmhouse sits in a rolling prairie. Gargantuan behemoths of undefinable origin lumber, possibly migrating, in the same direction, paying no heed to the house. In this scenario, it is the house which is the anomaly; it appears completely out of context, as if dropped there from another place and time...

"What We Saw in the Woods"

This drawing was not based upon a dream, but came to me after spending an evening in the forest alone, during a gibbous, waxing moon. It was a pleasant visit to the woods, but the walk home became quite eerie, and the feeling of being an interloper was intense. Once home and in bed, I was plagued (or blessed) with the impressions of nymphs, fauns, dryads, all collating into the definitive primal Woods-Witch. Ceremoniously painted, feminine, predatory, beautiful, and feral all at once. I jumped out of bed before sleep could take her from me and jotted a quick sketch; that sketch was barely changed at all from the final drawing.