THE HUM
2026, Mixed media on 270 gsm mixed media paper: acrylic, liquid watercolor, India ink, graphite, oil pastel 8.25” x 11.75”
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I am always observing, studying. I travel frequently, and the cities I spend time in are bursting with things to take in - skylines, cranes, bridges, light posts, the way a city sprawls beyond its own bounds and the mixture of merging life that happens at its edges.
This series began with a palette knife dipped in India ink, pressed flat against the page of a mixed media sketchbook. I immediately saw a skyscraper and laughed - it was accidentally so architectural and so exactly the overlap [of art and architecture] I live in. I started looking for what else I could find hiding in marks and as I worked I quickly saw power poles, roads, rivers, people moving through cities and buildings I didn't plan to make.
The first mark I made on Fire on the Mountain and The Latter Day Saints, the stark centered triangular line, became a mountain. I grew up staring at Mount Olympus from my bedroom window in Holladay, Utah. When I was eight or ten, it caught fire - a ring of fire visible from our front yard. Fire on the Mountain is a Grateful Dead song, but it is also that memory. The horizontal rectangle with a vertical steeple appeared next and I knew immediately what it was - the LDS temples that are impossible to miss in Utah.
The Grateful Dead are a thread through this series. Their music is transformative. I grew up hearing it and I seek it out every chance I get. After making the Fire on the Mountain and the LDS piece I felt a freedom to name and explore some of the other works in this series in conversation with them.
The blue and green pieces came from noticing an unintentionally restricted palette and I decided to push it. I introduced cooler liquid watercolors and immediately knew I was painting water: rivers, rain, nocturnal city scenes.
THE HUM is built from marks and the icons and anchors of the places I frequent, along with a vibrant palette anchored by inky, deep black. Community. Culture. Expansion. Emblems of a city. Architectural illustration meets expressive, abstract, gestural mark-making.
