"Tear that painting off the wall! You can do better than that, just throw it away and start a new painting" that’s what I thought after I painted this the first time. Instead of tearing it off the wall I decided to paint over it. So the second time after finishing I thought "you have to be kidding me, that is what you call better?!" It was that heavy intense voice that lives in the privacy of our minds, so I listened to him and I painted it a third time. Finally I was satisfied. That third painting is the one that you’re looking at. Not only are there three layers of this painting, the original version had wings. This piece now is part of a dream come true. I had been traveling around the world for three years working any job that I could find. When I finally got back to America I stayed with my folks for a month, before deciding to move to San Francisco. My dad was to give me a ride to the airport as we got in the car he turned the engine. On the radio immediately came a voice in an interview about the newly redesigned deYoung Museum in San Francisco. I secretly began dreaming of showing my artwork there one day. This painting now hangs in The deYoung Museum. Fifteen years later, it is now a dream come true.
Statement
These works explore humans ongoing struggle in our mastery over nature. The flowers allude to our mastery over plants and the temporal nature of being. This mastery has bent the trajectory of our existence towards a god like potential exemplified in the ongoing struggle to overcome disease, extend life and eventually a merging of humans with our self created technologies. These works look at the threshold upon which we now stand. One where humans ongoing survival depends no longer simply on technology and its ability to overcome nature but on our ability to overcome the creative and destructive nature within ourselves.
