Portfolio > Suspended Narratives

Neon Tether captures a young woman on the edge of becoming, suspended between the gravity of her rural hometown and the pull of an unknown elsewhere. Fragmented scenes—heritage, spectacle, memory, and the quiet glow of a small house at night—stack like chapters of a life not yet chosen. A luminous green line threads through the panels like an electric lifeline, binding her to place even as it hints at escape. At its heart is that charged pause before decision: to stay and belong, or to leave and redefine yourself.
Neon Tether
Mixed Media Oil painting
Roughly 44 x 30 inches
2026
$3000
Combining fragments of multiple paintings into a layered, fragmented composition, Glitch in the Familiar explores the instability of perception, memory, and identity. Melting faces and distorted imagery dissolve into abstract passages of color and texture, evoking the visual language of digital glitches and the imperfect ways we reconstruct what we see. Bridging the imaginative world of Imaginary Friends with the emerging Suspended Narratives series, the work inhabits a space between recognition and disorientation, where familiar images become strange and meaning remains suspended.
Fragments of Recognition
Mixed Media Oil painting
40 x 30 inches
2018
Where do we find ourselves, in our memories, our dreams, or the possibilities that lie ahead? This self-portrait brings together fragments of identity, weaving portraits, landscapes, symbols, humor, and mortality beneath a canopy of constellations. Less a record of who I have been than a meditation on who I am becoming, the work considers how the past shapes us without necessarily determining where we go. The painting began somewhat accidentally, emerging from a collection of existing panels and canvases that I brought together to create a larger, interconnected narrative. Rather than following a predetermined plan, I allowed the imagery and relationships between the individual pieces to reveal themselves over time. What began as an intuitive act of assembling became an unexpected self-po
Finding the Future While Contemplating the Past.
Oil/mixed media and found objects.
49 x 39 inches
2026
$4000
A crow perches atop a dissolving skull, occupying the uneasy space between memory and imagination. From this fading remnant, branching forms give rise to my signature treehouse robotic heads—playful, geometric fragments of consciousness that seem to take on lives of their own. The contrast between the skull’s somber presence and the vibrant, inventive forms suggests that imagination persists beyond its original vessel. Drawing on the crow’s mythological role as a messenger between worlds, the painting explores the shifting boundaries between life and death, identity and invention, the familiar and the uncanny.
Perch of Unquiet Invention
Oil Paint
30 x 24 inches
2024
$2000
Interstellar Romance began as Euphoric Sad State, a painting that ultimately became a breakthrough in my artistic practice and sparked my ongoing fascination with assemblage. Bringing together fragments of paintings that felt underdeveloped, unresolved, or unfinished, I discovered new possibilities in their relationships to one another. What once existed as a collection of disconnected ideas became a cohesive composition, finding its identity through juxtaposition, layering, and unexpected connections. Dark, mysterious, and gritty, the work occupies an uncertain space between memory, identity, longing, and the surreal. Disparate figures, landscapes, and objects coexist like fragments of a story glimpsed out of sequence, inviting multiple interpretations without settling into a single narr
Interstellar Romance
Mixed Media, Asemblage, Found Objects, Oil Painting
Roughly 40 x 40 inches
2024
$3000
Developed during my residency at the Raymer Society’s Red Barn Studio in Lindsborg, Kansas, He Who Rules the Roost, Pulls the Strings is a surreal assemblage that explores hierarchy, control, and the absurdity of power through an eccentric cast of puppeteers, puppets, and hybrid creatures. Part homage to Lester Raymer’s imaginative visual language, the work brings together two recurring motifs associated with his practice: roosters and circus puppeteers. At the center of this uncanny theatrical universe, an oversized rooster assumes the role of master puppeteer, presiding over a cast of human figures, a worm, a fish, and other surreal characters. Their exaggerated differences in scale establish a visual hierarchy, transforming the composition into a strange stage where authority and absur
He Who Rules the Roost, Pulls the Strings
Mixed Media, Asemblage, Found Objects, Oil Painting
Roughly 36 x 46 inches
2024
$3000
Patience Is a Virtue is a diptych that has evolved through multiple iterations, accumulating a history of revisions, interruptions, and rediscoveries. I’m drawn to the visible history embedded within a painting, the traces of earlier compositions and the unexpected possibilities that emerge when a work is reworked over time. This piece began as one painting, sat unfinished for an extended period, and eventually transformed into its present form. The work embraces a dark, gritty, and mysterious atmosphere, with surreal qualities that shift through the unconventional arrangement of its two panels. The smaller panel can be hung crooked, ajar, or upside down, introducing an element of instability and disrupting the viewer’s expectations of orientation. When displayed with its accompanying fel
Patience is Virtue (diptych) - Second smaller panel can be hung crocked, ajar or upside down 
Mixed Media, Assemblage, Found Objects, Oil Painting
Roughly 48 x 36 inches
2018
$3000
Rendered entirely in acrylic, The Searcher depicts one of my signature treehouse robot-headed figures wandering through the shifting threshold between day and night, carrying a lantern into the encroaching darkness. Partly inspired by the 2020 film Nomadland, the painting explores themes of isolation, uncertainty, and the persistent human desire for something beyond the present moment. The figure becomes a stand-in for the individual navigating an uncertain world, searching for meaning, connection, or a sense of belonging. I see this journey as a reflection of my own experience, shaped by the contradictions of contemporary life: isolation and hope, sadness and possibility, uncertainty and the dream of something better. Suspended between the fading light of day and the arrival of night, Th
The Searcher
Acrylic on Pannel
40 x 40 inches
2020
imaginary Friends Confined in a Box
Imaginary Friends Confined in a Box
Mixed Media, Assemblage, Acrylic, Watercolor, Drawing on Paper
36 x 24 inches
2021
$1200
Tree House Robot Block Head Cowboy Rides Again features one of my signature Treehouse Robot Block Head figures riding through surreal waves within a psychedelic portal. The painting marked a breakthrough in my return to incorporating these recurring characters into my work, reconnecting a longstanding personal mythology with my evolving painting practice. I first developed the Treehouse Robot Block Head figures around 2010 for an installation in which I constructed them from scrap wood and discarded materials. Since then, they have remained part of my visual vocabulary, serving as still-life props in my drawing classes and recurring subjects in the spontaneous drawings I make from memory or intuition. Over time, these figures have taken on the persona of cowboys, adopting a distinctly Wes
Tree House Robot Block Head Cowboy Rides Again
Oil Paint on Pannel
30 x 24 inches
2017
Suspicious Euphoric State explores distorted reality through abstraction, surreal imagery, and unexpected combinations of forms. Created as something of a one-off, the painting emerged before I began developing my Suspended Narratives series. At the time, it felt distinctly different from my other work, yet it would eventually become an important step in my artistic development. I was drawn to the central figure as it transformed, distorted, and morphed into something uncanny and unfamiliar. Surrounding it are unexpected elements, including a turtle, a banjo, roller skates, and fluffy clouds. These seemingly unrelated objects create a sense of mystery and open-ended narrative, inviting viewers to make their own connections. Looking back, I see this painting as a precursor to ideas I woul
Suspisius Ephoriuc State
Oil Painting
40 x 40 inches
2014
Here is a version of my Treehouse Robot Block Headed Man if he lived in Nebraska and had a pet cow.
Treehouse Robot Block Headed Man from Nebraska
Oil Paint on Assemblage Found Object.
36 x 12 inches
2017
Drunk Round Faced Cowboy — After Raymer is a painting I created following my 2023 artist residency at the Red Barn Studio in Lindsborg, Kansas. During the residency, artists are introduced to the home and studio of Lester Raymer through guided tours that explore his life, work, and artistic practice. One detail that particularly stuck with me was Raymer’s pot fillers—small, rounded figurative compositions that offered a playful approach to character and form. In a moment of procrastination from the work I had originally set out to accomplish, I began creating a few small portraits influenced by Raymer’s approach. While his work provided a point of departure, my own paintings embrace vivid colors, exaggerated features, and a distinctly different visual language. There is little danger of c
Drunk Round Faced Cowboy - After Raymer
Oil Paint on Pannel
12 x 9
2023
2026
2026
2026
2026
gnome, gnome painting, painting, art, awesome, woods, woodland, elf, glow worm, purple, red, trees, forest, forest people, forest ranger, great art, thick paint, great shit
Indecent Proposal
Oil on canvas
36 x 24 inch
2013

Suspended Narratives

My mixed-media paintings and assemblages construct fragmented narratives from disparate images, objects, and painted passages. Working primarily in oil alongside drawing, collage, and found materials, I combine smaller elements into larger compositions that suggest events without fully revealing them. Influenced by the fractured logic of Surrealism, the constructed spaces of assemblage, and the psychological ambiguity of contemporary narrative painting, these works exist between recognition and abstraction. Landscapes, figures, objects, and invented forms become fragments of a larger, unresolved story. Rather than illustrating a specific event, I am interested in the moment of suspension: what has just happened, what is about to occur, and what remains unknown. The resulting images are intentionally uncanny, inviting viewers to complete the narrative through their own associations and imagination.