— Taste Paintings, in progress and ongoing, 2026
Red Composition with Banana Split, 96" x 79", 2026
Pink Composition with Black Forest Cake, 55" x 46", 2026
When I was first allowed to hang things on my own bedroom walls, my prepubescent hands started thumbtacking up cool images from magazines — photos of cars, metal band posters, and, of course, erotic images of swimsuit models. As I’ve aged, I’ve learned to discern and prefer things of higher aesthetic appeal, quality, and cultural value. I see this process of refining my tastes as a kind of dressing up of that original impulse — putting a turtleneck on my appetite, teaching it to behave well enough to be socially sanctioned and less embarrassing. “Good” and “bad” taste are not opposites; they are two points on the same continuum of desire. The distinction isn’t moral or intellectual. It’s simply the difference between desire dressed and desire undressed.
This body of work makes that continuum visible. Each painting brings what we tend to call “good” and “bad” taste into the same frame — partly for the simple, deliberate humor of seeing two things that aren’t supposed to coexist side by side — but ultimately to reveal how closely they actually resemble one another. A marble fragment sits beside a romance-novel embrace; a baroque pose echoes pornography. These pairings aren’t meant just as oppositions. They show refined taste and crude appetite as parallel expressions of the same want, pressed so closely together that the distinction begins to dissolve.
Is that lemon de Heem or Starburst? Is that a priceless antique or a gas-station tchotchke? Is that flesh Rubens or Pornhub? Boucher or Danielle Steel? The layers sit so close that the usual hierarchy can’t be imposed. What remains is a field where taste no longer applies — where only naked, primal, practically undulating desire endures.
Red Composition with Éclair, 80" x 45", 2026
