Not gonna lie, I was nervous about announcing my new show, City of Trees, because it marks a return to oil painting after a 4 year rendezvous with acrylic and vinyl paint.
While unarchiving a large painting of a truck last Spring, I rediscovered several unfinished paintings from the same era. I decided to dive back in and see where the paint would take me. I felt a sense of urgency to connect and explore with color in a way that oils are uniquely suited for.
City of Trees was the former slogan of the city of Sacramento. As a recent Northern California transplant, the slogan evokes a feeling of nostalgia for a bygone time and place. Ironically, one I’ve never personally experienced. In one sense, diving back into these older canvases was a means of exploring alternate timelines and what might have been. In another, they became living metaphors of perseverance and evolution.
When I start a painting, I usually have some kind of an idea about what I want it to be, but it inevitably transforms into something that I didn’t quite foresee. A painting can’t be finished until that evolution has occurred.
City of Trees runs from January 3 - 26, 2025 at Axis Gallery (625 S Street, Sacramento, CA 95811).
The public reception is January 11, 5-8pm, with more programming to follow.