In the Gas, Food, and Lodging paintings I depict the world from the automobile’s perspective. The viewer is (literally) in the driver’s seat, looking through the windshield at the possibilities of an all-encompassing global strip mall. There are motels like Comfort Inn and Super 8; Fast food drive thru's Taco Bell, Burger King and KFC; those gas stations, Sinclair and Chevron; convenience stores advertising almost unlimited access: 7-Eleven and Kum & Go. In these paintings I attempt to examine the pictorial contradictions of car culture both as commodity and metaphor. With the pandemic cars have become the preferred transport to avoid breathing other people’s air. In our rush to declare socially distanced consumption an unqualified good, regardless of its shortcomings and compromises, car culture again rules supreme.

Each composition is dominated by a complex web of utility poles and lines. They entangle and enmesh all the other elements in the paintings, binding them to the picture’s plane and the viewer’s perspective. A symbolic representation, in wires and boxes and poles, of the tragic interconnectivity and complexity of the post-pandemic landscape. The paintings relate a kind of horror scenario, perhaps a crime scene, as the various titles suggest. The desolation of these images is emphasized by the corporate logos and the Chain stores become the villains in a sort of film-noir portrait. These paintings suggest a global society that roams about in cars looking for quick nutrition and the temporary safety of chain stores, motels, and gas stations. Gas, Food, and Lodging becomes a mantra of identity, a comfort zone, the way 'nationality' used to be. This series of paintings are about the operating system of today’s retail economy, about the end of small businesses, the obliterating of regional differences, and, like self-replicating code, the spreading of uniformity and despair.

Sleep, My Love, 2020, Acrylic on Panel, 24 in x 24 in

Sunset At Dawn, 2020, Acrylic on Panel, 24 in x 18 in

Seven, 2020, Acrylic on Panel, 20 in x 16 in

Circumstantial Evidence, 2020, Acrylic on Panel, 30 in x 30 in

Among The Living, 2020, Acrylic on Panel, 24 in x 18 in

Tobacco Road, 2020, Acrylic on Panel, 24 in x 18 in

Count The Hours, 2020, Acrylic on Panel, 20 in x 24 in