ARTWORK

RECENT AWARDS AND PUBLICATIONS:

Artwork published in 2024-2025 Vassar Review (out spring 2025)
Finalist, tARTget International Painting Prize (announcing winners spring 2025), Ateneo de Madrid, Spain
Jury Award winner, In The Urban Landscape exhibition at Curtis Center for the Arts
Winner, Monochrome Awards 2024, International Photography Awards, Honorable Mentions Portrait and Landscape
Published in Monochrome Photography Award's annual book
Published in Santa Fe Gallery Association's 2025 Artist Catalog, Santa Fe, NM

GALLERY AFFILIATIONS:

Represented by Seidel City. Work also available at Ford The River Fine Art (direct), True North Art Gallery, Alofft Gallery (coming soon), and NINEdotARTS. Additional gallery announcement coming soon.

CURRENT & UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS:

Marfa Invitational Open, Marfa, TX
Garrett Museum of Art, IN
Covet Art Gallery, Oceanside, CA
Panopticon Gallery, Boston, MA
Red Brick Center for the Arts, Aspen, CO
Sedona Arts Center, Sedona, AZ
Auric Gallery, Colorado Springs, CO
MOP Biennial: Big Picture, Denver, CO / International

ARTIST STATEMENT

As a photographer, I am interested in lived-in settings, and utilizing foreground elements, shadows, lines, and a subject's gaze to make evocative, sometimes haunting art. Much of my work is an exploration and expression of the human condition, and my connection to the natural world. I am drawn to emotional and naturalistic portraiture, as well as street photography. An avid traveler and nature lover, I often photograph people, animals, and places from my travels.

Shooting exclusively using natural light, my work is a combination of directed image creation, and photographing candid moments. This blend of controlled art making with capturing the unplanned allows me to remain a careful observer in close connection with my instincts. I prefer 35mm black-and-white film. At times I shoot digitally, sometimes presenting my photographs completely unedited, and other times employing digital manipulation to create a vintage, saturnine, even surrealist feel.

ARTIST STATEMENT (cot'd)

I paint under the moniker Dagu, the name I called myself as a child, to reference a joyful, unselfconscious, childlike state of art creation, and a reminder of the teachings I've received in adulthood related to the value of play. This is a departure from my photography, which is serious in nature, both in terms of process and tone.

Another way I adhere to my painting philosophy is to intentionally work in a variety of styles, rejecting external pressures or self-imposed limitations based on rigid views of cohesion. My paintings are unified by my use of expressive abstraction, striking color, various layers of underpaintings, bold outlines, simplified human forms, and emphasis on thick paint and textures. As with my photography, I work intuitively, am drawn to bodies and nature as subjects, and often create images of obscured faces.

Visit Ford The River Fine Art for more.