A Survey of No Place is a group of paintings that construct a visual representation of an artificial place – a study of an invented land. A fabricated maquette made of synthetic and geological materials visually references spectacular geological sites and is rendered monumental through painting. In this work, I am interested in the disparity between these rudimentary sculptural references and the final seductive imagery.

By re-examining my early memories of desolate, yet curated, landscapes, these paintings unearth a fictional natural beauty intertwined with feelings of loss and inevitable change. Similar to the way memories function, these works shift between clarity and haze, retelling and reimaging. These hyper-saturated and romanticized oil paintings employ photo blur and crisp Photoshopped edges to evoke a feeling of “unreality.” A Survey of No Place serves as an examination of indeterminate time and place through its engagement with ideas of artificiality in landscape and memory.