How a piece like this actually gets made
People ask if these are planned or if I just throw paint at a canvas. Honestly, it's both. Here's what happens between a blank canvas and a finished piece in the Chaos of Reality series.
Studying the ones who came before
Before I touch a canvas, I go back to Franz Kline and the New York Abstract Expressionists — not to copy them, but to remind myself what a single honest mark can carry. Their work taught me that a painting doesn't have to be careful to be true. It just has to mean something when it lands.
The sketchbook
Every piece starts small, in a sketchbook, long before it's a painting. Quick studies let me feel out a composition without committing a full canvas — and honestly, on the days my body isn't cooperating, the sketchbook is where I can still work. It's the one tool that never asks more of me than I have that day.
Starting small before going big
Once a composition feels right, I test it on a small canvas first. Large-format action painting takes a physical toll I have to plan around, so I earn my way up to the big canvas — proving the idea works at a smaller scale before I commit the effort a full-size piece demands.
Three layers
Every finished painting goes through the same three layers. First, a line drawing — the skeleton of the piece, laid down with whatever control I have that day. Then an underpainting, where the mood gets decided: how much black for the trauma, how much crimson or magenta for the hope. And last, the bold action strokes — thrown, struck, or gouged onto the canvas using the limbs I still have, bypassing the pathways the injury took and finding a new route to get the paint where it needs to go.
"I am still here. I am still creating. I still exist."
Proving the process still works
A finished canvas was never really about hitting the plan exactly. It's about proving that I can still start with nothing and end with something — on my own terms, with the body I have now, not the one I used to have.