God’s Hot Car, installation view, 2024

Watchful, Soft Waiting, Acrylic ink on found towel, 122 x 70 cm

Dipped Down Into the River – That’s Alright, Oil on canvas, 100 x 70 cm

Oh Boy, We got Ourselves a Real Winner,
Wood, screen print and found t-shirts, 35 x 35 cm

Roadside Jesus and the Bones of a Coyote, Oil, pencil on wood, 95 x 85 cm

Worn From the Stalk, Oil on wood, 30 x 20 cm

Seekers, Oil, glass taxidermy eye on wood, 18 x 24 cm

God’s Hot Car
May 2024, Ormond Art Studios, Dublin, Ireland

As I near the end of my six year residence permission in Ireland and the imminent return home it implies, I’ve been thinking a lot about my teenhood in rural Pennsylvania. At times I find myself overcome with nostalgia for wide lane highways full of muddied jeeps and pickup trucks with lifts and fat hips, a 24 hour donut shop that doubles as the county’s Trump campaign headquarters, and the eagles, hawks, snakes and beavers along the Yellow Breeches Creek where I once met God. This visceral reaction could be understood as a coping strategy for a coming pivot or maybe the simple longing for the landscapes of one’s youth (you can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl).

God’s Hot Car reflects the romantic state of limbo from which the work developed, and continues my research questioning hierarchies between humans and animals. The paintings take further inspiration from rural hunting cultures, the work of Andrew Wyeth and anthropomorphic forms in early 20th century Norwegian painting.