Memories of Myth
“Echoes and Tradition: Songs Worth Remembering”.
Oil paint on canvas. 2024. 40 x 36 in. $6,000
A depiction of my Dad playing a song for his father, who has now passed. On my dad’s side of the family, love of music flowed from generation to generation, and we can see here the joyful pride in my grandfather’s expression as he takes in the skill and mirrored passion in his son’s song. This scene speaks to tradition, and how it can maintain legacies and keep the memories close of those who came before us.
“Echoes and Tradition: Swan Song”.Oil paint on printed canvas. 2025. 40 x 36 in. $3,000.
In the second version, they are now joined by my grandmother on the keys, and their musical tradition has been placed on a mythic stage. They maintain their familial roles, but have become the cosmic lineage of the legendary Greek musician Orpheus, his father (in some traditions) the sun god Apollo, and his mother the muse Calliope. Overhead, the clouds have taken on the forms of a swan attacking a hound, which are symbols of Apollo and Artemis respectively. And so, we have the day beating back the night, a concert that refuses to end, and tradition which won’t allow loved ones to leave us entirely.
“Magic Mentor: Wise Uncle Norm”. Oil paint on canvas. 2024. 36 x 24 in. $6,000
A portrait of my Great Uncle Norm, a nearly mythic figure from my dad’s side of the family who imparted some of his worldly wisdom onto my father at a pivotal time in his life. In it you can see the age in his hands and face, the eccentric joy in his clothes, a reciprocal love of nature in his little dog Misty walking happily beside him and in the trust of the small yellow bird resting on his shoulder.
. You might question the odd presence of the gun at his side on this stroll, and get a sense of his connection to a violence that doesn’t entirely match his character, yet is carried with him. Norm was a war hero who abhorred violence, but bore witness to it and had to take part in it while serving in WWII. The bridge he stands on references a story from that time, in which he hung beneath a bridges by his hands in the freezing cold as a German tank battalion passed overhead. He did so to continue his movement behind enemy lines to provide reconnaissance on the movement of that battalion to his fellow soldiers.
“Magic Mentor: Bright Side of Ragnarok Oil paint on printed canvas. 2025. 36 x 24 in. $3000
In the second piece, Norm has become Odin, the Norse God of wisdom, war, and poetry, to name a few. Odin who famously took out his own eye in exchange for wisdom, and sacrificed himself to himself on the World Tree for knowledge of mystical runes. Who on earth or in heaven better understands the price of wisdom?
And so he stands unsurprised as Misty, tethered by her leash, begets the wolf god Fenrir- pulling free from Gleipnir, the nearly indestructible thread which bound him. His release is the inevitable, wild reclamation of chaos, and it marks the beginning of Ragnarok, Odin’s death, the destruction of the great World Tree, and the end of everything as we know it. However, a new world follows the old in Norse mythology, just as a wise mind requires the death of an innocent one..
“Primordial Waters: The Start of Everything”. Oil paint on canvas. 2025. 18 x 24 in. $3000
A portrait of my grandmother Anne (who died of mad cow disease) as a child sat before a large bovine presence. Together they represent the full spectrum of her life. That life was not an easy one, yet she dedicated it to serving her community, particularly the children in it. So, she and her cow are placed on this small outcropping, surrounded by water, and there becomes a sense of foreboding to an otherwise tranquil scene. The child seems yet unaware of this, and the apple in her hands offers the choice of Eve in the Garden or Pandora with her box. If she could would she do things differently?
“Primordial Waters: The End of Nothing”. Oil paint on printed canvas. 2025. 18 x 24 in. $1500
The waters have become a flood and the cliffs, a world devouring serpent. Anne has eaten the apple, seeing it all, and yet she still smiles. These mythic symbols of world destruction are also the symbols of rebirth. Mythic serpents like Jorgmundr, Apothis, and Tiamat are the chaos that devours everything, but they’re also key to the natural cycle, hence the symbol of the ouroboros. The great floods that destroy the world in many mythic traditions always carry an element of cleansing in their surges. They are not so different from the primordial waters, which the universe springs forth from in the story of Genesis in Christianity or of Nefertem in Egyptian mythology. You cannot have good without evil, life without death or hope without fear because they define each other. Doing good in the face of hardship is what makes it so precious.
“Trinities: Weave, Measure, Cut”. Oil paint on canvas. 2025. 40 x 60 in. $12,000
Three portraits of my mom to capture three stages of her life.
In the first, despite her youth, there’s an intensity to her, demonstrative of how quickly she had to grow up.
Then we see her brimming with a sense of self, undaunted by motherhood and ready to be a maker and shaper of the world around her.
Finally, we look upon her third figure, swathed in black and turned away in prayer. It is a mysterious aspect we all share. It is both aspirational faith and looming oblivion- always further down the line, yet one we are destined to meet.
“Trinities: Dusk, Day, Dawn” Oil paint on printed canvas. 2025. 40 x 60 in. $6,000
There is a prevalence of trinities in religion and mythology, and the ones I reference here are the Fates of Greek mythology and the Christian Holy Trinity. Clotho (weaver), Lachesis (measurer), and Atropos (cutter) are the Fates, and their identities seem to me to capture this 3 fold nature of the human experience: of past, present, and future.
In the past, we were thrust into the world, and forced to form ourselves, without understanding, amid the tumult. The past is the thread of our lives that can’t be changed.
So, we must do what we can with it in the present, and we make measured decisions to determine our life.
And then at some point we die. Looking in that direction we can’t know when the thread will be cut, we can only aspire to something greater than we are now.
“Fishing Stories: Marcus and the Trout”. Oil paint on canvas. 2025. 24 x 18 in. $3,000
My father hoists a massive rainbow trout that was never photographed- the story of its capture has been left to oral tradition.
Growing up, my Dad instilled in me a love for fishing, particularly trout fishing. To this day, nothing makes me feel closer to nature than quietly wading into a river and trying to decide where a fish would want to hangout and what they want to eat that day. However, there is a great deal of irony in the sport fisherman. We speak in terms of great achievement, reciting the tales of our best catches, and every one of us will insist upon our deep love for the creatures we brutalize. The barbaric reality is that we snag a smaller (usually) and certainly simpler creature with a barbed hook and drag it from its element to gasp, flop, and bleed while we jump for joy at our success and luck.
“Fishing Stories: St. George and the Dragon”. Oil paint on printed canvas. 2025. 24 x 18 in. $1,500
The use of scale in the imagery of St. George Slaying the Dragon (an often depicted Christian folktale from Medieval times) is meant to imply the supremacy of God’s righteous power over evil, but I have always found that it accidentally makes the dragon very sympathetic and the act of its killing quite hard to look at. The emotion interfering with what ought to be the straight forward Christian narrative of a conquering hero.
At first glance, you know to root for the man who stands tall with a glowing halo, square jaw, and strongly implied cross to his composition. In the next moment , however, you may notice the similarities in the color pallets of each figure, that the dragon’s pose is also cross-like, or that its wound is the same one suffered by Jesus in his final moments. You might suddenly feel that dragon’s expression is one of surprised pain rather than vicious snarl.
Our oldest stories can certainly carry deep truth, indeed they must to have persisted so long, but the truth they carry might not be the story’s original purpose. Their truth may lie in what they reflect about us.
“Daydream 13”.2023. Oil paint on canvas. 36 x 30 in. $8,000
“Daydream 8”. 2022. Oil paint on canvas. 24 x 20 in. $3,000
“Daydream 7”. 2021.oil paint on canvas. 20 x 24 in. $2,500
“Daydream 6”. 2021. Oil Paint on canvas. 12 x 24 in. $1,500