EX NIHILO __

Ex Nihilo, ‘from nothing,’ draws from the metaphysical terrain of light phenomena, particularly on a cosmic scale: electromagnetic waves, the magnetosphere and solar winds, and atmospheric phenomena. Light, behaving as both wave and particle, echoes the optical impact of narrow lines fusing together to create a color haze between the painting and the viewer.

Color arises from a spectrum of waves that are felt and heard, but only seen in a small band to which we are arbitrarily sensitive. Light bends, hinting at this hidden complexity. Nothingness ruptures, and the physical world flickers to reveal its cosmological source. This points to a deficit in the modern social condition: a collective longing for spiritual depth, even as dominant religious traditions often withhold access to the divine at best, and at worst, justify global violence. These works explore the hidden mechanisms of energy to reawaken an innate knowledge of a more infinite and accessible power, and a more humane place within it.

My paintings are diagrammatic color games, studies of evolving systems at the intersection of order and cacophony. I draw from the geometries of the color wheel, infusing color with the poetics of numbers as a language for understanding reality. My hearing loss has affixed a linguistic aspect to color. With pattern, a painting becomes a predictive system: a map. Patterns filtered through disintegrating algorithms are like utterances with missing information, requiring predictive maps to synthesize noise into meaning. Colors behave like packets of sound, as systems create the legible image. When missing information collapses into glitch, the visual field oscillates between recognition and the unknown.

Color is defined by change and unpredictability. Each encounter with color is radically impacted by its surroundings and its place in time. Color mechanics generate vibrating fields of simultaneous contrast. The eye adjusts to color, changing it. Particulate colors fuse at a distance to form the impression of new colors. With the ongoing development of pigments, optical and physical mixtures evolve through time, so the foundation of color theory itself is always shifting.