One of my earliest jobs was working as a land surveyor, and eventually a draftsman, for a civil engineering firm. Though I pursued a career as an artist, I could never really shake those seminal experiences of measuring, quantifying, and recording information about terrain into the form of a plat or map. They continually bubbled up in my art.

So in 2006, I decided to make those experiences—that mindset—explicit in my work by adopting a cartographic vocabulary. The question became to what new purposes might this language be applied? I adopted a palimpsest model, which had been a regular strategy in my artistic practice. I placed one text, the cartographic language, on top of another text so that each text coexists as something new is formed. The paintings below follow one of three trajectories. Some are modeled after Chinese landscape paintings, some tell stories of historic journeys, and some attempt to visually represent different musical composition forms.

My paintings appear below as thumbnail images. Holding the cursor over an image will reveal its title, media, etc. Clicking on any image will open the gallery to full view minus labels. Click on Slide Show to see paintings with their lables.

Variations in the Use of the Language of Maps

Small Playful Works