I am reminded of Paul Valery's warning that one must be careful to speak of paintings--especially when I write of my own work. There is indeed a necessary but ultimately discomforting futility attached to such  exercises as the artist statement. This willingness to accept the limits of discourse with respect to the experience of looking,  may be one of the identifying characteristics of my new work; a quality that clearly separates it from previous, more didactic and self-consciously engaged undertakings. The new series of paintings come out of a willingness to accept a degree of ambiguity, a kind of intimacy or shared contract with a viewer that reveals itself over time.

The work in this exhibition is an extension of a project that has occupied me for the better part of a decade: the construction of a series of paintings (and by extension a painting practice) that is in a critical dialogue with the historical conventions (languages) of abstraction. Though it is tempting (even inevitable) to read the work as a knowing critique of historical models of self-expression, it is my hope that the new work appears slightly more slippery and perhaps less fixed to any certain interpretative or critical position.

Yet in the end, the central issue of my painting remains intact: how does one make abstract paintings that appear knowing, without succumbing to easy cynicism, or visually enticing without collapsing into feigned sentiment. I suppose I want my works to speak awkwardly, to wrestle with the historical predicament of abstract painting today without ever conceding endgame.