I create art works that incorporate colored optical filters to explore the interaction of light and color, and the ways that this interaction can take us outside of our day-to-day lives and give us opportunities to experience our world on a deeper, less ego-driven level.

While my work can be characterized as light art I don’t particularly think of myself as a light artist, at least not in the currently understood sense of the term. A lot of light art these days relies heavily on technology, employing everything from computer programs and elaborate lighting arrays to illuminated drones. The effect is often really cool, but I think that the human element can get lost in the spectacle. And so while the colored filters I use are made for high-tech applications such as medical equipment and astronomical imaging, I employ them simply as a means to get color (admittedly very flashy color) into my art, the beams of light comparable to paint brush strokes. As an exploration of light and color I see my work as having more of an affinity with Abstract Expressionist painters like Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko than with light artists such as James Turrell and Olafur Eliasson (both of whose work I do love, technology and all).

The pieces I make are meant to create a space where the viewer can become absorbed in light and color. The experience can be meditative, it can be energizing, it can even be meh. I don’t want to tell people how to engage with my art; everyone should have their own experience of it. I do, though, encourage people to take their time looking at the pieces. It can take a while to start to fully absorb all that’s going on: subtle shadings of color, perceptions of depth, varying intensities of light, black shapes outlined by the light beams, and things I might not have even noticed myself. And as the viewer gets more absorbed by what they’re seeing my hope is that it might quiet the mind a little, allowing one to become more present to the moment and to the power and beauty of pure light and color.