I consider the panels painted objects. Some retain realistic colors and some illusion of depth but they mostly explore rhythms, colors, and patterns and are based on building up textural relief and in my fascination with the effects of textural and reflective attributes or painting.
Urban Panels are ultimately unified by a common conceptual dimension: the pieces are an invitation to plumb our minds and arrive at new conceptions of urbanity, humanity, and nature. The image of leaves on a water company’s manhole cover is titled “Leaves on Water”. The panel featuring an electric manhole cover is “Power”. And other panels reveal different yet interrelated ways to challenge our assumptions about landscape and identity.
The panels are painted on homosote or MDF, substrates that can support heavy textures. All of the images are designed to be shown without frames, with their edges exposed, and with the contours understood as integral to the image itself. The physical properties of the materials caused some panels to curve slightly inward during the process of creation, yet I embraced this unpredictable aesthetic, and built on it. The curved panels became “rakous” and the flat panels “tiles.”