A fire n’ brimstone church revival. 16”x20” acrylic on canvas

A pure snapshot of any and every carnival. This one was ridiculously fun to paint. The kids in the foreground were a late addition, a little something to fill the space correctly, almost an afterthought. They become echoes of the kid testing his mettle against a game he's not supposed to win. The old man looks on with pride and a little jealousy. They're all his own echoes, I suppose.

24”x36” acrylic on canvas

It's a scene from a threshing bee, an ode to my hometown of Barnes, Kansas. Barnes turns 150 (one year per citizen) this year, and so do I. Circa 1985, Barnes put together their version of a Summer carnival. It had a threshing bee, tractor pull, car show, flea market full of Vietnam era army surplus, a softball tournament, and a contraption where you could literally, I shit you knot, make your own rope.

I wanted a sense of foreboding. A woman stands atop a hill outside her home. In one hand, she holds what’s left of the last chicken. In the other, a hatchet. She’s looking back at the house, and doing the math on how far she can get, if she goes through with it.

A massive and sprawling Flint Hills landscape, scored over time by glacial drift and cattle paths. I painted the hills like an ocean swell, rolling the Earth itself up towards the heavens. I needed to smash a ten mile view into a three foot wide x four feet tall canvas. It still spills out,

I can hear and smell this painting. It checks off my boxes of "call of the open road" and "i guess you had to be there." A vacation slide from the trip that you don't like to talk about, but still need the occasional reminder as to why. I picked Burbank because that's where all the game shows were. A maybe too long station wagon pulling a maybe too small Airstream. Hope, downsized for travel. If Burbank is a bust, we can try our luck in Aberdeen. I've seen the postcards from Scotland.

Two men running barbedwire along a row of hedgeposts. They scowl accordingly, because it wasn't done right the first time. The point of view in this painting is from the kid that did it wrong, but that kid don't mind. They're out at the river, and anyone running wire on a day like this has made enough mistakes of their own.

"Solitude for the sake of solitude" is a central theme that runs through many of my pieces. If there is a person, they may not even be the subject of the painting. The setting is what I'm after, and the subject is the place and time. I want to put the viewer inside, to see the vastness I see. I want them to feel the sun, the breeze. I want them to feel alive in the solitude, but not necessarily alone. The title is pulled from Hemingway.

This one has a story. I spent a sizable portion of my youth waiting in the station wagon, the farmiest of farm implements. This is not our station wagon, we had a blue Plymouth. This is a Buick, and the color is the color of Dad's flatbed, the propane one that caught fire. Details notwithstanding, this is an accurate portrayal of a memory.

"summit"
30"x40"
acrylic on kansas

I've always held a large infatuation with carnivals, and for a time, it seemed that many of the choices I made in life took a carnival-adjacent turn or flavor. I liked the Americana of it. Grifters and rubes, three balls for a dollar. Machinery so old and worn down, repainted so the next town wouldn't know the Devastator used to be the Riptide that killed that boy last Summer. Bootleg KISS and Mötley Crüe merch, Michael Jordan flying through the sky on a mirror in a paper frame, and the real-deal-i-swear-to-god Elvis Presley counting crumpled ones and fives in the RV, with an ill-tempered dog or two chained outside for color. That's just plain art.

I grew up across from the grain elevator in historic Barnes, Kansas. I learned all the ins and outs by age ten, as we were all feral children, and there wasn't much to keep us entertained that didn't involve trespassing. Those are the sorts of qualifications an employer looks for, so it was no surprise when I got a job at Palmer Grain. This painting is neither of those specific dustbins, but there are pieces of both, and a little of Linn and Greenleaf. When the train still ran through it took me to wherever I wanted to go, as long as it was one of those very specific places.

A sky-high pile of hay bales born in the swelter of a summer afternoon. Build your own shade.

I spawned this one on the dreaded and much-maligned drive through Western Kansas, en route to Denver. Kara and I were going to see The National at Fiddler's Green, and I saw plenty of beauty through the barren wasteland. In the interest of brevity, I decided to try to squeeze it all into one piece. Trains and fields and an endless patch of road. Acoustic and electric windmills. Limestone castles built to last forever by a people that were not, and towers of grain standing fast against rust and ruin, as long as the trains keep to task.

A farmer works the dirt along the treeline with a Farmall. Overhead and to the West, a flock of starlings in a liquid formation. When he was a kid, he could watch them fly all day. Now he can only look down towards the dirt of an Earth that holds no promise, but luck.

The carcass of a grain truck lies in state outside the city limits. As you walk towards it through the sharp and cool grass, all manner of insects herald your arrival. The grasshoppers and the wasps are in cahoots. Today, they have a common enemy. Tomorrow, the truce is over.

“pestilence”

20”x24”

acrylic on canvas

I've always held a large infatuation with carnivals, and for a time, it seemed that many of the choices I made in life took a carnival-adjacent turn or flavor. I liked the Americana of it. Grifters and rubes, three balls for a dollar. Machinery so old and worn down, repainted so the next town wouldn't know the Devastator used to be the Riptide that killed that boy last Summer. Bootleg KISS and Mötley Crüe merch, Michael Jordan flying through the sky on a mirror in a paper frame, and the real-deal-i-swear-to-god Elvis Presley counting crumpled ones and fives in the RV, with an ill-tempered dog or two chained outside for color. That's just plain art.

A frenetic take on the Old God of the New West. I used to watch them chug on past as a kid. When my arms got long enough, I decided to grab hold and take the wild ride. They look like they’re moving pretty slow. They are not, I assure you. If you aren’t already running alongside, you’ll need a fresh shoulder and a really good lie to tell your folks.

I modeled the tractor on the John Deere B that we used when I worked at Palmer Grain, mid-90s. Palmer was where Pop grew up, and I felt like royalty.