IN MY OWN WORDS ON MY POINT OF VIEW

Artist Statement

I'm a photographer because I make pictures with a camera. I'm an artist because of the images I choose to make and share. I succeed as an artist when my work speaks on my behalf in my absence: when the abstraction inside me, once carefully, deliberately expelled from me, sustains itself despite me, even in spite of me.

The foundational, intellectual and artistic precepts that inform my work are pluralist, humanist, absurd, and aesthetic. I'm drawn to quietude and stillness on bright, hot days and fast, prosaic gestures in dim light. Design, composition and color theories of various schools were hammered on me hard starting at a young age. I'm a consummate de-constructor of narratives, images, ideas, stories, and the people around me. I'm a planner and organizer, and consensus-driven team work gets me hot. I am always plotting something or working towards an evasive goal post. 

I was born and raised in the Central Valley of California in a big-little town called Stockton. I'm told I demonstrated a gift for the arts by the time I was five-years-old. By nine I was enrolled in Aldrich School of Art & Gallery where I focused my energies on drawing, painting, and sculpture. After my time as an undergraduate studying art theory, production, and criticism in the Fine Arts program at California Institute of the Arts I discovered a compulsion to use medium format film cameras and developed an interest in the history of fine art photography. So I make less and less time to abuse origami for fun by torturing the practice in a post-structuralist abduction.

My freedom to create what I want is singularly important to me and has informed my work, to whom I present it, and the manner in which I present myself to the public as an artist: not loudly. When people ask if I make art for a living I tell them the answer is obviously yes. To eat, live and breathe engineering a sustainable, repeatable and scalable solution to bring order and objectivity from the abstract muse requires a whole life.

Long have I been preoccupied with forcing a discussion about my fascination with art and the way art works through the work of my art. It's confounding and impossibly challenging which I find vigorously motivating. I've looked for the answer in a dozen countries and in counties all over the U.S. Recently locked down—it's a short story in the shape of a trope—I've been putting my practice to good use in the service of others in neighborhoods nearby. 

Now I hope you feel like you can say know something about me and my art. Regardless, it's important to remember life does not teach us about itself. Rather, everything we know of it we've had to teach each other.

Thanks and enjoy,

Ted