I’ve been taking a deliberate pause from large canvases and working instead in object form.
This new assemblage book, titled RECOMBINATE, grew out of that space.
To recombinate means to recombine – to splice, rearrange, and generate something new from existing parts. That verb felt right. The work is not a fixed image. It is an action. Each page layers salvaged photographs, thread, fragments of paper, small relics, and paint into an open-ended structure. The narrative isn’t prescribed. It emerges through proximity and attention.
I burned the title into the wood box that houses the book. No stain, just varnish. I wanted the grain to remain visible – honest, unembellished – and the word to feel irreversible. The act of burning it in removed any temptation to second-guess the name. The object declared itself.
This piece marks a shift in my studio rhythm. After years of building a large inventory of paintings, I’m choosing to make fewer canvases and allow more room for concentrated, tactile work. Less production. More intention. More accident. More heart.
Assemblage sharpens my eye differently than painting does. It requires editing. It asks for restraint. It asks for listening.
RECOMBINATE is not a departure from my painting practice. It is an extension of it – memory layered, fragments in dialogue, materials carrying their own histories.
Thank you for taking a look.