Feral

An invasive species is a non-indigenous plant or animal that adversely affects and disrupts the habitat into which it is introduced. A feral animal is one that has been domesticated and then returned to the wild to become an invasive species.

This series of paintings and collage work includes both animal and plant life that has reclaimed its wild state after being altered by man through domestication.

Many of these paintings are executed in a combination of wet and dry materials on oriented strand board (OSB), an engineered wood product formed by compressing strips of wood in cross-oriented layers and bonding them with wax and resin. Commonly used as subflooring in the construction trade, this manufactured board retains the grain and surface texture of the fragments of wood from which it is made, but in more complex and unpredictable patterns…in a sense, much like the alteration by man of what was once natural.

In "Feral," I seek to capture the wildness that drives the altered organism to escape from domestication and re-establish itself in the natural world.