Laguna College of Art + Design

As a painter who hunts, my art concerns the dialectics of hunting. How can I say, “I love deer”

while I am in pursuit to shoot one? Why is it that I am both remorseful and happy when I stand

over an elk whose life I cut short? Where is the beauty gleaned from when I recall the dead

turkey lying in the dirt? I began hunting when I was twenty years old and it has changed my life.

My thesis body of artwork, The Harvest, explores these inherent contradictions. I create beautiful

pictures of horrific scenes. Visually, I am painting carcasses and animal body parts.

Conceptually, I am expressing my emotional recollection of hunting experiences. I rely heavily

on the contrast between lights and darks in my art to deliver my primary concept: the conflict

between mortality and sustenance. In order for a thing to live, another thing must die. As for my

compositions, they are simple. Each painting is of a single animal centrally located, or slightly

off-center, in a room or outside in nature. This approach was inspired by artists such and

Rembrandt and Antonio Lopez-Garcia. I avoid creating art for a pro-hunting audience. My art is

meant to speak to everyone. The contemplative intrigue is in the conflict of realizing that there is

beauty in the obviously grotesque. Painting these pictures has in turn shaped how I perceive

nature. I am not so much as disconcerted by the many dialectics in nature now, but rather I am

delighted to recognize these philosophical phenomena. I accept that death is an essential part of

being alive. Ironically, death is what makes life beautiful.