The Downtown series is a large body of work typified by a sort of series within a series, a body held together more by disparities than likenessess - a deliberate attempt at anti-branding.  What immediately comes to mind when you think of Rothko?, Pollock?, Warhol? Exactly.  Great artists that nonetheless created commodities and a branded identity that gallerists could then market convincingly.  I explore things incredibly deeply in periods it seems of 3-7 years, and then move on to other frontiers. This is a creative, not a marketing strategy.

The Downtown series is a hyper-focused version of creative exploration, as I set out literally to make one piece as different from the next as possible using entirely different voices and visual vocabularies.  Still, they tended to spill out in groups of three.  And somehow the overall body of work holds together, perhaps by it's sheer variety, or something about the flavor.

Here's a more involved blog post about the approach: The Plight Of The Unbranded Artist.

This work reflected the nocturnal Lower East Side NYC / DUMBO (when it was SLUMBO) lifestyle I was immersed in, a world of indie-bands, skateboarding, nootropics and petty crime.

Formally these pieces address my interests in different modes of depiction, from painterly and luminous, to flat & opaque, and from collaged and aggressively textured segments.

An intense body of work that reflected its day.

Click on images to see full paintings.