About

I am an abstract expressionist artist based in Austin, Texas. I create large works through experimental processes that merge industrial materials and photographic techniques.

I come from four generations of metal workers. From my great-great-grandfather’s foundry in Ireland to my grandfather, a metallurgist for the U.S. Navy. However, much of my early life was spent in a darkroom with my father, a career 35mm SLR photographer, where I learned how to process images from negatives and cull them.

In 2008 I had a strong pull to work with steel, but with photographic film processing logic. Due to breaks in my family, I didn’t realize I was actually putting together the pieces of my heritage.

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I live in Clarksville, Old West Austin, with my wife and two children and hold degrees in Sociology and Anthropology from Southern Methodist University, and an MBA from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas.

I have built an inventive practice which involves breaking things a lot, and failing. I am off-course probably 99% of the time, and even that may be generous. But when the process works, I create large-scale abstract artworks that tell a story of innovation.

In the Ferrophoto series, this is done through a unique sequence involving low-carbon steel and photographic transfer to acrylic glass. Each series is the result of meticulous experimentation, reflecting both my background in technical systems and my artistic lineage.

My current work focuses on two complementary series: Ferrophoto and Signal. These pieces are placed with both corporate and private collectors—often through commissions.

The works are created on large glass panels and range from 4 to 30 feet in both circular and rectangular shapes.

From an early age, I spent hours creating and studying art. Growing up in an artistic home exposed me to formal concepts that shaped my perspective and gave me artistic confidence.

Over time, it was the creative act itself that drove me, especially the challenge and uncertainty of doing work with processes I had never seen used before. Most of the series take years of experimentation, trial, and failure. Once I have developed working processes and the necessary associated tools and tech-stack, new works can be developed in weeks instead of years.

Only upon reflection did I consider that going off the map was the comfortable path for me. I was a 6’5 mixed raced kid, growing up in what was at the time a tiny segregated Austin Texas, I was forced to accept being different.

My collectors are often seeking to tell a story of innovation, and my work helps them do that. I believe we are at our best when doing what we are not certain can be done.

Each piece, from the Ferrophoto and Signal series, begin in a gritty, hot, steel warehouse where I source industrial low-carbon steel. These are loud, sweaty, large places, filled with men of the same ilk. For years I felt like an ousider in these places and at times would hear the whispers “Here comes The Looker”. I just keep my head down and try to steady my nerves. To this day, walking into a steel warehouse fills me with bolts of overwhelming anticipation, like a gambler’s first hand.

I’ll load the sheets and bring them back to my quiet and compact studio and start a transformative process that can last anywhere from months to years.

The steel is etched, oxidized, and manipulated before I photograph them and transfer the imagery to acrylic glass. I have names for these steps, like: Stripping, Burning, Layering, Washing and Sealing. These sound like neat boxes but within each step is a number of delicate operations that are infuriatingly unpredictable.

Steel is like an inebriated person. It acts like it wants to sleep, but if you wake it, you’d better have a plan to control it. It’s unwieldy, recalcitrant, and unpredictable.

Ferrophoto is a body of work that captures the chaotic, organic beauty of steel as it undergoes transformation. These large-scale works are forged on industrial steel and transferred to acrylic glass, revealing imagery that feels simultaneously microscopic and galactic, organic and alien.

The works are full of intricate detail, flowing mysterious negative spaces.

The name “Ferrophoto” merges my dual inheritance:

• Ferro for the steel lineage of my ancestors, and

• Photo for the photographic tradition I inherited as a child.

This series is rooted in material science as much as it is in artistic vision. Both film and steel are crystal-based recording media:

• Photo film uses silver halide crystals to capture light.

• Steel contains ferrite crystals that record pressure, oxidation, and usage.

This work is as much about innovation as it is about perseverance. Only 1 in 5 of these works are successful. The rest succumb to the delicacy of the process. A weeks worth of failures requires patience, several weeks worth requires acceptance.

Signal is the conceptual and aesthetic counterpart to Ferrophoto. Where Ferrophoto is chaotic and lush and hard won, Signal is refined and focused. If Ferrophoto is the storm, Signal is the eye- a moment of clarity pulled from complexity.

These works begin with microscopic fragments of Ferrophoto imagery, some less than 100 microns wide. I digitally enlarge and stretch these fragments to reveal hidden linework and subtle gradients, uncovering structure from noise. Each final piece is as much discovered as it is created.

In data science, a signal is the meaningful pattern buried within overwhelming noise—like a cheetah crouched in tall grass, or the handful of markers that predict disease. It’s the quiet voice in a child urging them to bet on themselves.

Signal is difficult to find because we live in a world of constant overload. This series is about seeking and honoring that clarity, in steel, in ourselves, in others, and in our ideas. Each piece represents a mediation or single moment of stillness from which a signal arises.

As of the end of summer/fall 2025 I have 2 experimental processes under development. One, “Unmined”, involves the recrystallization of hundreds of pounds of sodium borate solution on fiberboard substrates. Which means I am growing extremely large crystal beds. the objective is to tell a story of how it is possible to be both resilient as well as transparent. So often we hide the truth to gain an advantage, but crystals have the special properties of strength and clarity. This project is in its 5th year because of the difficulties in achieving archival quality work. Recent breakthroughs from 2023 mean that I am now monitoring the crystals for stability and after 2 years they are absolutely clear so I am nearing the end of the experiment.

The other series is a very straightforward project involving filling fluted polycarbonate sheets with liquids. It was inspired from a merchant who was selling pigments deep in a medina in Marrakech. The works seem to emulate changes in nature: sunsets, sunrises, joy, surprise, etc.- it is the most basic work I have attempted but the results have been compelling and I have enjoyed working on a project that is both crude and expressive. I haven’t even named this project yet as I normally have years to think of these and this has been in the works for less than 10 months