Originally Burning Man 2019, currently in private collation.

Stone 27

The Legend of Okjökull is a large scale painting, 72 x 120 inches (183 x 305 cm). Okjökull was an glacier in Iceland, but declared dead in 2014 by Oddur Sigurosson, one of the country’s leading glaciologists. The site is now marked with a plaque that warns “In the next 200 years all our glaciers are expected to follow the same path.” It is Iceland’s first glacier lost to climate change. The painting is based on NASA’s September 14, 1986 arial photograph of the glacier. My goal was to turn the image into a sign of warning and a monument to the glaciers’ past majesty. With this in mind, I selected the color yellow to signify instability, caution, and sickness, while painting the Okjökull purple, a majestic color of nobility, dignity, and grandeur. 

The Legend Of Okjökull

Mountains Beyond Mountains brings a natural paradox directly and peacefully into the gallery, creating a Zen-like interactive relationship between the installation and viewer.

As the viewer approaches the large infinity box that appears to blanket the entire room with real, live grass, the horizon-plane of the box and room appears to fall away; creating a steep downhill slope in which the horizon is lost and pushed away from the viewer. Inversely, as the viewer recedes from the piece, the horizon rises up, creating a prodigious incline as the participant walks further and further backward.

This metaphysical and intellectually moving installation was designed to transcend the environment of the confined gallery space using real-life, living material. Through the most simple analog means, the viewer is transported into complete sensory engagement with their surroundings in physically-moving call and response with the immediate universe. The convincing effect of this installation is created through the clever use of simple optical tricks with the aid of range detection sensors and subtly placed mechanic armatures that shift the perspective of the entire room relative to the distance of the viewer to the heart of the artwork. These effects are compounded by the use of real live grass as the focal form of the work, the specific scent of which gives the atmosphere of the space a powerful and visceral feel.  




Mountains Beyond Mountains V2

I poured raw emotion into this vibrant mix of acrylic and oil pastel, breaking free with expressionism and primitivism to reveal a playful, bold character. Its explosive colors and jagged shapes radiate energy and courage, designed to ignite a bold, uplifting spirit wherever it hangs. This piece is a joyful clash of chaos and control, inviting you to embrace your own vibrant uniqueness every day.

Mr. Fettgans

This works relates color to the role of neurotransmitters that regulate our moods. Noradrenaline is a transmitter similar to adrenaline that increases levels of alertness, priming us for action.

Noradrenaline Dilation

Inertial Resistance in Red and Yellow

This painting depicts a semiconductor and the island of Taiwan. Today this small island manufactures 90% of the most advanced semiconductors in the world and is a geopolitical hotspot. Recent supply chain shortages have marked the beginning of a shift away from globalization.

Insufficient Capacity

Installation view at MAINSITE Contemporary Art. The painting is a mashup of satellite documentation of the Fujiwhara Effect and decadal hurricane oscillation metrics in the form of a graph. Combined the imagery simultaneously demonstrates the massive destructive power of the double hurricane and increased hurricane activity over time, which is amplifies by the long narrow canvas. Colors are also utilized too impart a sense of warning on the viewer. My intention as a painter is to also make a painting that contains visual motion, compelling rhythms, and that is tempered with an engaging aesthetic. The complex interaction of aesthetics and message reflects our relationship with climate change.

Fujiwhara Effect

Horizons “Nature Arts” Festival, Montgreleix, France. Now permanently installed.

Stone 9

The stone is moved continuously, requiring 12 hours to travel from the ceiling at noon to just above the floor at midnight.  Illustrating time, with time.

Untitled (Clock)

Circling Stone 1

A site-specific work that was created for Chatsworth House’s “Radical Horizons 2022 exhibition.

Stone 40

Being a passionate sculptor, I always carry a sketchbook in my pocket, in which I outline small objects. I gave them the abstract but euphonic name Rugla Swepum. I used thirty-five of the scribblings from this collection, scaled them up on aluminum boards and then painted them out with thick, bright-colored varnish.
The first thing viewers often notice in the work of Rugla Swepum are the bright colors. But if you look more closely, the details of the artwork begin to emerge. Lines, constructions, shapes and figures. Beautiful and stylish, chaotic, abstract and yet somehow still familiar. Flowing lines, radical forms, brutal cuts, breaks and fragments all come together to ultimately stir up a question within the viewer: What is this? What am I actually seeing here? Is it a face? A spaceship? A dancer? Or is this a mountain—maybe the Alps?
I created the paintings of Rugla Swepum in the everyday movements of life. The inspiration behind them weren’t just gathered out of thin air, they were dug up from the depths of the soil of life. Over the past few years, I’ve scribbled in my sketchbook, gone through creative processes and worked hard. Yet along the way, I also made new friends and solved problems. I jumped into a river with a backflip, I endured crises, and I fell in love. I felt the depths of despair and I found courage again. I doubted. I trusted. I arrived. I broke up and started over again. 
Life can be a chaotic series of experiences. One moment you can follow happiness that runs like a golden thread through the carpet of life, and the next moment something pulls the carpet out from underneath you and leaves you in pain. How is it these extremes can fit together?
I believe we find beauty in life the more we are able to see and enjoy the whole picture—extremes and everything between. My hope is that viewers will see the various works in Rugla Swepum as an opportunity to examine their own lives. In the paintings, elements intertwine, occasionally squeezing themselves in and cutting structures apart. Layer lines up with layer. Color sets itself apart from color. A new form arises, a new contrast, a shape made of fragments. Together they all add up. Together it is not round, not whole, not simple. It is more than that—it is complete. In life, some things simply cannot be intertwined. They remain paradoxical, broken, unconnected, next to each other … and yet when viewed altogether, they are still whole. 


Rugla Swepum 

In this work I integrate single use plastic bags into the painting surface. The bags introduce a new contextual dimension to these paintings and serve as an opportunity discuss one of our modern challenges. For example, Americans use 100 billion plastic bags each year, which require 12 million barrels of oil to manufacture. It also takes 500 (or more) years for a plastic bag to degrade in a landfill. But these bags photo-degrade, becoming micro-plastics that absorb toxins and continue to pollute. I look for ways to combine this non-traditional painting material with paint to create compelling metaphor. Color is used with symbolic consideration. By combining material and color through painting, I’m able to tell a contemporary story through the tradition of painting. 

The Problem With Plastic No.4

In this work I integrate single use plastic bags into the painting surface. The bags introduce a new contextual dimension to these paintings and serve as an opportunity discuss one of our modern challenges. For example, Americans use 100 billion plastic bags each year, which require 12 million barrels of oil to manufacture. It also takes 500 (or more) years for a plastic bag to degrade in a landfill. But these bags photo-degrade, becoming micro-plastics that absorb toxins and continue to pollute. I look for ways to combine this non-traditional painting material with paint to create compelling metaphor. Color, like yellow, are used with symbolic consideration. Yellow is a color of contradictions. It can suggest happiness, positivity, and loyalty. But it is also a sign of instability, caution, and sickness. By combining material and color through painting, I’m able to tell a contemporary story through the tradition of painting. 


The Problem With Plastic No.1

One early morning, a phone call suspends the usual course of city life in Berlin and renders it a world that momentarily falls into the hands of mysterious masked figures.  Who is hiding? What is there to hide from?

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