The thinking that led to these paintings began in graduate school. I was making paintings based on drawings that my son and I were making together. We would draw with crayons and magic marker and then I would turn those drawings into large oil paintings. My son would help with the themes and narration of the work. I would do the drawing. While making those grad school paintings I ended up drawing many animals to go along with my son's themes: firefighters, planes, cars, enchiladas werewolves and more. The grad school paintings were trying to capture that moment of drawing with my son and keep it as a document of that time. Eventually my son lost interest and discovered Legos, but I kept on drawing animals especially dogs. After considering the Philip Guston hood paintings for a long time, I thought that I could use the dog the same way he used the hoods. The dogs are a stand in for me at times, for masculinity, and sometimes for capitalism and society at large. I often paint dogs that look like wiener dogs because of the way small dogs often overcompensate for their size by acting aggressive, this is my jab at masculinity. In the painting Resources two dogs are standing over one bone. It isn't clear if they will share the bone or fight over the bone and there is a tension that is unresolved. Both dogs are panting from exhaustion. The title hints at the idea of people fighting for scraps that are left over as wealth accumulates in the hands of very few and the masses are left with less and less.
As I painted the dogs I wondered if I could also represent people in the paintings as well. I wanted to create a world where people, places and animals all coalesced. In the painting Traffic I have painted myself sitting on the highway idling in an old Dodge truck I used to own. In central Texas we all dread sitting in traffic, but it seems like no one is willing to give up their car or move forward with useful mass transit. I often wonder what kind of world we are leaving for our children. Parts of our world are literally burning from our fossil fuel consumption. These paintings look funny, I am using humor to lighten the load of the themes in these paintings. Throughout this work there are references to water, air conditioning, technology, leisure and middle-class domesticity. In the painting Information Dissemination I have painted my own desk and three books that were highly influential in the thinking leading to the painting—Night Studio, The Uninhabitable Earth and The Will to Change. In The Will to Change, Bell Hooks says, "There is only one emotion that patriarchy values when expressed by men; that emotion is anger." I am thinking about my family and society in these paintings, about our futures and I am trying to be softer for them.