For the past two years, I have been working on an expansive series of oil paintings that explores the large, fleshy male body in relation to the physical and psychological spaces of American suburbia. Positioned within empty rooms and floating above overbuilt neighborhoods, these figures inhabit spaces that contain a tension between comfort, confinement, and disconnection.
The first series explores the male body within the quietly theatrical spaces of suburban domesticity. In these private spaces, the figure is oversized not only in form, but in presence: fleshly, vulnerable, and unmapped by traditional ideals of masculinity or beauty. These men do not dominate their environments, instead they are disoriented or estranged within them, slouched across pristine sofas, sunk into oversized hot tubs, or simply still. I am interested in this dissonance, especially how suburban spaces become stages for silent, strange performances.
In other paintings, the suburban architecture falls away entirely. These men float above rooftops, hovering silently, and happily, over empty streets and manicured lawns. This aerial perspective suggests both a spiritual detachment and a quiet haunting. Are these bodies escaping the gravity of conformity, or are they tethered to it? Are they floating or falling?
Rendered in oil paint with an emphasis on flesh and surface, these works blur realism with dreamlike estrangement. The floating bodies are not fantastical, they are slow, heavy, and suspended in a kind of emotional stasis. Their presence interrupts the narrative of the suburban ideal, exposing it as indifferent, awkward, or quietly oppressive.