— Taste Paintings, in progress and ongoing, 2026
Pink Composition with Black Forest Cake, 55" x 46", 2026
When I first hung images on my bedroom walls, my pubescent hands thumbtacked up cool clips from magazines — cars, metal bands, swimsuit models. As I’ve aged, I’ve learned to discern and even prefer things of higher aesthetic quality and cultural value. But I've come to see the process of refining my tastes as a dressing up of that original impulse, as if I've put a turtleneck on my appetites, taught them to behave well enough to be socially sanctioned, less embarrassing. I don't really believe in “good” and “bad” taste; they are two points on a continuum of desire. It’s simply the difference between desire dressed and undressed.
This body of work makes that continuum visible. Each painting brings what we commonly 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. These pairings aren’t meant just as oppositions. They show so-called refined taste and crude appetite as parallel expressions of an identical desire, pressed so closely together that any distinction dissolves.
Is that lemon de Heem or Starburst? Is that a priceless antique or a gas-station tchotchke? Is that the flesh of Rubens or Pornhub? Boucher or Danielle Steel? The usual hierarchy can’t be imposed, and what remains is a field where only naked, primal, practically undulating desire endures.
Red Composition with Banana Split, 96" x 79", 2026
Red Composition with Éclair, 80" x 45", 2026
