scraps and tatters
In Scraps and Tatters, I explore what makes something meaningful and how context shapes importance. These paintings focus on bits of decontextualized studio detritus—everyday scraps like used masking tape, torn paper, scribbled notes, and remnants of discarded works. Painted in a manner slightly adrift from realism, these humble fragments become unassuming motifs, blurring the line between the observed and the imagined, the literal and the symbolic.
At first glance, the compositions feel simple and restrained, resonating with abstract minimalism. But a closer look reveals a layered world of meticulously rendered imagery: fragments from art history, personal photos, philosophical texts—all residue of the creative process. The language of abstraction merges with the trickery of trompe-l’œil, creating tension between what’s easily dismissed and what’s inexplicably significant.
This series intentionally considers the overlooked, discarded moments and materials as a place of quiet importance. These scraps of life—often ignored—become a record of life as it occurs, especially life in isolation. The project began in 2020, during a time when I was undergoing back-to-back cancer treatments and living with a tattered immune system in the face of the pandemic. Forced into solitude, I had plenty of time to sit with my thoughts and the accumulating scraps in my studio. They started to feel like a mirror of my own fragmented experience—life paused, longed for, discarded, refreshed, avoided, and remembered. These works were not made to be shared. They were made for me. Made to ponder. Made to consider. Made to keep making.
As I worked, Camus’ philosophy of the absurd and ideas about deep time simmered in the back of my mind, reshaping how I understood meaning. Filtering all of this through my ongoing fascination with knowledge, meaning, and the messy incoherence of life, I came to a simple conclusion:
Scraps are all we have.
Scraps are all we make.
Scraps are all we leave.
Life is lived in the ordinary, overlooked moments—the scraps. They accumulate, form impressions, and store themselves in memory. So, in this series, I’ve decided to archive the scraps. Because, in the end:
Scraps are all I ever was.
More recently, my engagement with scraps has expanded beyond the personal to the collective. In an era where shared knowledge is eroding—where history is redacted, facts are reframed, and curiosity is too often met with suspicion—I’ve turned to encyclopedias, once bastions of accumulated understanding, now overshadowed by the spectacle of digital information. By rendering fragments of forgotten and discarded knowledge, decontextualized from the encyclopedia at large, I reflect on the slippages of truth, time, and perception. These paintings meditate on what is preserved, what is lost, and how meaning itself is continuously reshaped by the forces of history and interpretation.
At first glance, the compositions feel simple and restrained, resonating with abstract minimalism. But a closer look reveals a layered world of meticulously rendered imagery: fragments from art history, personal photos, philosophical texts—all residue of the creative process. The language of abstraction merges with the trickery of trompe-l’œil, creating tension between what’s easily dismissed and what’s inexplicably significant.
This series intentionally considers the overlooked, discarded moments and materials as a place of quiet importance. These scraps of life—often ignored—become a record of life as it occurs, especially life in isolation. The project began in 2020, during a time when I was undergoing back-to-back cancer treatments and living with a tattered immune system in the face of the pandemic. Forced into solitude, I had plenty of time to sit with my thoughts and the accumulating scraps in my studio. They started to feel like a mirror of my own fragmented experience—life paused, longed for, discarded, refreshed, avoided, and remembered. These works were not made to be shared. They were made for me. Made to ponder. Made to consider. Made to keep making.
As I worked, Camus’ philosophy of the absurd and ideas about deep time simmered in the back of my mind, reshaping how I understood meaning. Filtering all of this through my ongoing fascination with knowledge, meaning, and the messy incoherence of life, I came to a simple conclusion:
Scraps are all we have.
Scraps are all we make.
Scraps are all we leave.
Life is lived in the ordinary, overlooked moments—the scraps. They accumulate, form impressions, and store themselves in memory. So, in this series, I’ve decided to archive the scraps. Because, in the end:
Scraps are all I ever was.
More recently, my engagement with scraps has expanded beyond the personal to the collective. In an era where shared knowledge is eroding—where history is redacted, facts are reframed, and curiosity is too often met with suspicion—I’ve turned to encyclopedias, once bastions of accumulated understanding, now overshadowed by the spectacle of digital information. By rendering fragments of forgotten and discarded knowledge, decontextualized from the encyclopedia at large, I reflect on the slippages of truth, time, and perception. These paintings meditate on what is preserved, what is lost, and how meaning itself is continuously reshaped by the forces of history and interpretation.
