"Study for 'The Boys Club'" is something of a marriage of my Pattern & String Theory Series. My Pattern work focuses on animals that are so common as to become overlooked. Recontextualizing these subjects in a repetitive, pop-art inspired context, forces viewers to reconsider the familiar. My String Theory series explores birds perching on abstract lines and bars of color. Though not objectively descriptive of anything as prosaic as telephone wires or branches, these lines become new environments simply by juxtaposing them with recognizable subjects. This contrast and the resulting tension between flat areas of color and representational realism is my primary interest, both in this painting and in my art in general.

Though three of the cardinals are painted “true to life,” they act less as focal points than they do as launching pads for an exploration of vivid color relationships and entirely abstract patternmaking. This painting is a study for a larger piece already in progress.