My present work is about expressing the malleable nature of time and how the mind can alter and transfigure events in future and past parts of our lives. When I paint I often remember the steps and methods used and upon looking at the image at a time in the future, I may go backwards and deconstruct the image in my mind, in a similar way to how returning to a location might remind a person of things that happened years before and bring about thoughts and understanding that were unavailable at that time. When we remember things that occurred, like going backwards through the day’s events, I think that we recollect what was felt and experience a more conscious awareness through adding more thought and allowing emotion to be understood. Through the cultivation of thought and becoming aware of oneself I think one can gain a better understanding of time and how simple association or repetition can alter and create new time where there was none before.

In 2010 I began painting digitally using a Wacom, a pressure sensitive tablet and stylus input for a computer, and used screen capture, which records every ‘brushstroke’ of what I paint on screen. I would then edit and time lapse the video as well as altering the flow of time. From these videos I could take a painting that took 8 hours to create, condense it to 15 seconds and then reverse the video so that in 30 seconds you could see the process used in creating the image and then watch as the same image devolved and began again. While I was working I suffered a concussion and began imagining an alternate history that developed after I found an old biography of Eisenhower that had an interesting portrait on the back. I would listen to the news on the radio while painting and imagined a world in which a cybernetic artificial intelligence was created that permeated the internet and had a bodily form of an android in the likeness of Eisenhower. The android was created by the military as a computer entity that was much more intelligent that any human mind and was a last resort super weapon. Upon the activation of Cybernetic Android Eisenhower rather than launching bombs it instead used confusion and altered all the languages of the world, including the meaning of words, all communications, removing anger from voices in phone calls and preventing any sort of violence from occurring.

In order to display my digital work I have taken old television sets and modified their hardware to play digital video, as well as painting the exteriors. I have found that part of what I want to do when I make these videos which I call ‘moving paintings’ is to transform televisions into a type of ambient art. I designed my art to transform the place of a television from the centerpiece of a room to a painting hanging on the wall. I feel when our attention is enveloped by an interesting narrative or focused on hand eye coordination it becomes difficult to think our own thoughts or to relate to others in an authentic and meaningful fashion. Not to say film or games are bad when taken in moderation but when taken to extremes I feel they can become a damper on developing authentic relations or understanding oneself and can lead to isolation.

When I first began creating digital time lapsed paintings I was recovering from an accident that put my canvas work on hold until my arm could heal and was given hypnosis treatments as part of my physical therapy. I still experience the pain but to a lesser degree and I used painting with a Wacom as an escape. When I would paint I would forget my pain but I would still think and my perception of time would be different. I hope that others when watching my paintings will get to feel or experience the state in which time is altered but thought still occurs. It is that time, where I think about time or think about thoughts, and I do not feel isolation because I feel understanding and peace.