The Disguise Was Almost Perfect series represents a group of paintings that engage with the influence of technology on the cityscape. The process behind these paintings is peripatetic in nature, it migrates and wanders. Using Google Street View, I created an itinerary around Los Angeles, placing markers in the satellite map and allowing Google to find the shortest path around them without using freeways. In Google Street View, I scrupulously follow this itinerary looking for anomalies in the landscape, beautiful combinations of buildings, outdoor advertising and vegetation.  Next, I visit each of these chosen sites in person, photographing them from the same perspective, inside the car through the windshield, as they are depicted by Google. These photographs serve as the raw materials for the paintings.

The paintings represent a complex mixture of chance elements in the landscape: fan palms, yuccas, eucalyptus trees, billboards, roadside attractions (such as Mark Di Suvero’s Declaration on Venice Beach), cell phone towers, lamp posts and the anonymous architecture of the city sprawl. The result is a sort of “accidental ensemble” depicting new culture/nature symbiosis in the cityscape. The paintings are influenced by a complex set of circumstances: the direction of the sun, property rights, the flow of traffic, the arbitrary decision-making of corporate capitalism, the fertility of the soil, the social class of the neighborhood, energy and lethargy, to name a few. Somewhere in this hyper-complexity, is the opportunity to create images with great authenticity, thoughtfully integrating the overlooked, quotidian elements of the Los Angeles cityscape while representing a tangible and inevitable shift towards a creative process that incorporates the vast and ever-expanding virtual world.

Pioneer Species ,acrylic on panel, 36 X 60in, 2016

Memory Performs Constant Repair, acrylic on panel, 40 X 30in, 2017

Randy's Blue, acrylic on panel, 30 X 40in, 2017

The Disguise Was Almost Perfect, acrylic on panel, 48 X 36in, 2015

Vandenberg, acrylic on panel, 48 X 48in, 2016