For me, making art has always been more like an involuntary compulsion, rather than an intentional choice.

I started making drawings as a young child, as most children do. I guess the difference is that I never stopped making them. I don't think I could stop now if I wanted to.

So, it's funny question to answer. I never had a moment where I sat down and decided that I wanted to become an artist. I just woke up one day realized that I've been habitually making art for the past thirty years.

On its most fundamental level, my work is about storytelling and worldbuilding. I'm certainly not a coder by trade, as many generative artists tend to be.

My background is in design, architecture, and artmaking, rather than technology. However, a few years ago, I became fascinated with the format of generative art, especially through platforms likes ArtBlocks and Fxhash.

What excited me most about this format was the opportunity to create an open-ended narrative structure or, in other words, to use generative scripting as a medium for worldbuilding.

At that time, I had no real experience with coding, so I didn't even understand how to go about creating a generative project. But, as an artist, when you recognize the potential of extending your work conceptually through a new tool or medium, you owe it to yourself to put in the time to learn that new medium.

So, I spent several months learning to code, which led to my first generative project released on Fxhash, entitled “Southern Gothic.” And, as it turns out, there was a significant audience hungry for that kind of narrative-based work within the generative art community.

One of the most important things that an artist can do is to change the way people see the world around them. Some of my favorite artists have spent their careers revealing the poetic depth of the ordinary and the everyday.

I'm thinking especially of artists like Ed Ruscha and Bernd and Hilla Becher. I see my work as following a path that has already been charted out by these artists.

As for where I source these ordinary elements in my work–some of them come directly from my generative projects, especially “Southern Gothic” and "Ordinary Places". I'm also drawing upon my own experiences of rural landscapes in the United States.

I think the uncanny character of these works comes from the dissonance between the familiarity of the individual elements and the ambiguity of their role or meaning within the larger scene. So, there might be a water tower or mailbox or a swing set.

Each of these elements is a common, familiar reference point. However, placing them within a staged still-life prompts the viewer to question whether these elements are really as familiar as they might initially seem to be.

I tend to think of my body of work as a singular meta-project that is constantly evolving. So, the short answer to your question is that these structures come from previous projects.

The rural farmhouses, one-room church, and swing set were originally created through generative code in "Southern Gothic". My second generative project, "Ordinary Places", featured barns, water towers, and gas stations. Then, my "Cul-de-Sac" series brought in suburban references and the bulldozer.

Once a particular element is introduced, it becomes fair game for all future projects and things just sort of build on top of one another to create a world.

There's this Billy Collins poem called "Horizon" that I really like. Basically, the poem says that you can transport someone to an imagined landscape by drawing a crude horizontal line across a piece of paper.

It really is that simple–in my work, the horizon line forces the viewer's brain to perceive the scene as some form of landscape. So, with “Landscape Parables” I'm intentionally playing with this perception by arranging the individual elements and structures as a still-life composition, which emphasizes the individually of the elements over the unity of the landscape as a whole.

This creates a surreal experience that blurs the line between the pictorial representation of an actual landscape and the hallucination of some dream world.

I suppose the theme of melancholy derives partially from the subject matter of my work, especially my interest in rural landscapes.

On the one hand, there is a tendency to romanticize rural landscapes–to see the humble farmhouse or barn as a symbolic representation of a certain way of life. On the other hand, there is a sense of dread and isolation inherent to rural life.

I try to create scenes where these contradictory feelings can coexist. This ambiguity, combined with the emptiness of my landscapes, which almost never include human inhabitants, produces a sense of melancholy that you can find across my entire body of work.

My approach to composition actually varies quite a bit from project to project. In my generative works, the compositional logics are scripted through a set of rules.

In "Southern Gothic" and "Ordinary Places", for instance, the scenes were constructed as flat, elevational compositions with each structure depicted in a frontal, orthographic manner. With other generative projects, such as "Theoretical Townships" and "Cul-de-Sacs", I've constructed aerial or isometric views through code.

With "Landscape Parables", I began with a series of compositional sketches that were primarily focused on the mass and position of elements.

Then, these compositional sketches were translated through digital modeling. In some cases, the final piece stayed true to the original sketch, but in others the end result became something different altogether.

The narrative building and storytelling came together in the process of translating the compositional sketches into full scenes.

I'm constantly trying new techniques and exploring new themes. The question for me is whether I will choose to share some of those experiments.

Up to this point, I've been very selective about the works that I make public, because there is a level of consistency required to maintain the coherence of a meta-worldbuilding project.

I make physical paintings and collages every single day that no one ever sees (except for my kids and wife). I'm a firm believer that artists need to be in the studio on a regular basis trying new things and exploring new conceptual territories. But I don't think you necessarily have to share those experiments.

Looking ahead, I plan on continuing my rigorous focus on producing a cohesive body of work, but I'm also slowly opening up to the idea of expanding the types of work that I will release.

Perhaps there will be physical paintings released at some point. Perhaps another generative project.

I haven't said anything yet about the title of the collection. The notion of a "parable" typically involves a story that teaches a lesson.

There are lessons and commentaries on landscape embedded within these scenes, although they are sometimes subtle and shrouded in ambiguity.

All I can hope for from the viewer is a willingness to engage with the visual imagery of each scene and a willingness to interpret these landscapes through the framework of their own life experiences.