The Zen like Quality of Giraffes

This painting is one of my favorites, based on a photograph I took of a giraffe at the San Diego Zoo it is has a serene, zen like quality to it and it just feels right to me. The distant stare off into space by the giraffe, and the title “Contemplating the Day While Still Wary of Friendship” is very personal to my own experience in life I believe. I am a distant person, I feel my way through this world in a very similar fashion to that giraffe. The open space, the little yellow hexagon.. (hexagons, particularly black hexagons, are my personal symbols of death and finality) it all represents the way I experience life.

The number 3 is a puzzle even to me, I use numbers often, possibly to express the arbitrary nature of existence in general.. and if that isn't the most pretentious thing I've ever written I'm sure I will top that in my next blog post.

It is a funny thing trying to explain these paintings, in many ways when I paint it is like recalling a dream I once had, but not even knowing if it is accurate.

When I work I usually let a painting coalesce around itself, I follow where the painting leads. Which is why I am always nervous about commissions.. not even I know what a painting will be like, how am I supposed to meet a patron's expectation?

At the end of the day my work is like a snapshot of the random firing of neurons during a typical fleeting thought you might have while eating an ice cream cone before a funeral. What does that mean? I have no idea, and frankly I rarely know what my paintings mean either. That being said, I know I don't haphazardly throw paint at a canvas, every decision, every color choice, subject matter and composition is intentional. I don't do random for the sake of random, it really does feel important when I paint it. Sometimes I feel like I'm writing my own story in an alien language, and then I'm asked to translate it, as if I know how.