Built in Nature
Dowd 2nd floor mezzanine
Exhibition Dates: Jan 23 - Feb 5, 2025
Artist's Statement
In my work, I combine watercolor painting with a focus on light in the surrounding environment to give significance to the fleeting, often overlooked moments in our everyday.
I use watercolor paints to glaze layers of color onto watercolor paper. My art is guided by the beauty I find around me in everyday life, and in this collection I highlight how manmade structures and nature can complement each other’s unique beauty.
Stoicism and Adlerian psychology have been large influences in my artwork. The Stoics claim that, through being present, one can find happiness and inner peace. I find it especially important to remember this idea in the present age of social media, hustle culture, and technological innovation in the Bay Area and beyond. This collection consists of brief moments in time that I tried to replicate in a more permanent medium. Much of my subject matter is landscapes from places I visit often and sights that can often lose their charm once they become familiar.
My goal is to reflect these ideas through the natural and architectural landscapes that I paint, capturing fleeting moments in time. Whether it is the warm light of the golden hour spotlighting a wall of a building, or the glow of water illuminated on a clear, sunny day, light and shadow play a large role in my paintings. I often push the contrast further than in real life for a crisper result and more intense value variation. For me, watercolor serves as the ideal medium for capturing the translucence and fluidity of water, yet it can be built up into depicting strong, impenetrable structures.
I am continuing to apply the philosophies of Stoicism to my artistic process, and hope to explore more of these ideas in future collections. I am deeply grateful for the viewers of my work, and hope it impacts your personal perception of the surrounding environment in a way that is memorable and unique to you.