Oil and Steel represents the fusion of my two creative obsessions: painting and metalwork—a convergence that has defined my artistic evolution and continues to drive my most compelling work.
For much of my artistic journey, I've focused on painting surreal landscapes layered with spiritual and religious undertones, exploring the liminal spaces where the sacred meets the surreal. While I've experimented with sculpture over the years, it remained peripheral to my practice—until the day I sculpted a large stainless steel bolt salvaged from a broken machine. That transformative moment changed everything. Sculpture shifted from mere curiosity to undeniable calling, awakening something primal within my creative spirit.
I grew up immersed in my father's machine shop, learning the ancient language of metal from an early age. The rhythm of hammers, the spark of welders, and the smell of heated steel became my first artistic education. That foundational knowledge now informs my steel sculptures, where I breathe new life into discarded machinery, transforming broken fragments into surreal characters caught in vivid, emotionally charged moments of vulnerability and strength.
Each piece begins with the meditative process of welding together large fragments of steel, building skeletal frameworks that I then shape and refine using an expansive array of tools—from heavy grinders that strip away the unnecessary to delicate Dremels that whisper details into existence, and finally, the intimate precision of a hand file that brings each surface to life.
These works exist where my two worlds converge—in a dynamic menagerie of raw emotion, luminous oil paint, and industrial steel. My deepest hope is that you lose yourself completely in this world I've constructed—and perhaps discover something unexpected of yourself reflected within its metallic depths.
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