Proximity & (im)Permanence

29 Oct - 12 Dec 2025

Arts place
131 East Walnut StREET
Portland, IN 47371

My work in this style started as a means to express my reverence for the natural world by way of a nod to the stained-glass window in the church where I grew up as a pastor’s kid (Zion Evangelical Lutheran, just blocks from Arts Place in Portland). But while that’s the origin story of this style and still holds very true, it has continued to expand in meaning for me over time and, I hope, will continue to do so.

In 2025, this style has helped me meditate on the question, “how do we face what overwhelms us?” Painting block by tiny block reminds me that we meet whatever comes not just with grand and immediate gestures but also with ongoing, deliberate steps, making perhaps small but intentional contributions to progress every single day. Working to understand how one rectangle’s presence and qualities impact those in proximity to it reminds me that our personal efforts must work with and be enriched in return by those from others. This very slow, very human labor (over 100 hours on Birsay Bay, for example) helps me wrestle with the often seemingly impossible task of creating lasting, empathetic change in the world. The work is daunting, but with the gradual accumulation of diverse, individual steps into communal effort, the result, whether artistic or societal, gains in depth and meaning.

The subjects for these pieces are glimpses into a trip our family made thanks to a teacher’s grant awarded to my spouse in 2024, particularly from our time in Orkney, an archipelago off the most northern tip of Scotland. The main island is the home of a neolithic site (Skara Brae) older than the Great Pyramid of Giza as well as the third largest stone circle in the British Isles (the Ring of Brodgar). These islands have been shaped by the endless crashing of individual waves from the North Sea, creating a perpetually shifting and yet, timeless landscape. What feels impossibly old and permanent is also in constant proximity to the fleeting: wildflowers (like thrift and bird’s foot trefoil) and pools of vibrant seaweed and abandoned shells that are revealed at low tide. The vast and imposing and enduring is made up of millennia of perishable minutiae. That contrast and combination is overwhelming and awe-inspiring. It kindly lends itself to my slow work of painting blocks side by side and the consideration of lasting progressive change made by individual daily efforts even within our own impermanence.