Welcome To The Art Lab

I first started working with epoxy resin several years ago making castings of actual size birds to be used as decoys in conservation projects using social attraction techniques to encourage natural breeding of the species.

The decoys were never intended to be artistic. The intent was to make them so realistic that an actual live bird would mistake it for another live bird.

It was during this process that I began to understand the possibilities of the medium. But sculptures are not the only thing one can do with resins. There are various types of epoxy resin each with its own properties. Those properties are derived through the chemical composition of the epoxy itself. Some are thin like water, while others are thick like putty.

Here at the New Leaf Art Lab, I use various techniques to manipulate the resin into images and sculptures. This includes dissolving, layering, and even using fire to alter the properties of the resin to achieve the effects in my art.

I combine those techniques with the more well known painting techniques like airbrush, graffiti, and the traditional brush to blend the two together. I then take it a few steps further by incorporating wood working, glass, and even printed digital art into many pieces.

It’s a little “Mad Scientist” meets “Crazy Artist”.

(Of course, one could argue those are one and the same.)

Through these techniques I create organic abstract imagery that can feel vast and complex. I balance this psychedelic chaos through the interplay of the familiar, clearly defined geometry, to guide the viewer towards a introspective evolution in their own understanding of the natural world around us, our role within it, and how our future lies not in controlling it, but by being in tune with its chaotic melody.

We are natural things after all. Completely integrated and dependent upon our Earthly host. Adrift in an infinite cosmic sea on a pale blue life raft. Here we are not immortal or permanent. We are temporarily gifted a moment in time to bear conscious witness to reality and all it’s strange, wondrous, and frighteningly beautiful existence.

At least that’s what I see. Art is subjective.