For me, this body of work is a sort of going home. After 10 solid years of creating and selling fine art photography, this project represents the first real exploration of the place where I grew up. On the surface, this work takes a literal look at the minimal, yet intriguing landscape of western Oklahoma. Just below the surface, these common scenes stand as metaphors, gateways to my memories and emotions of a place that had a profound effect on my artistic aesthetic today.

 

The genesis for this series began with the hay bales that cover the vast fields of countless counties in the state.  The round bale stands as the icon of the western Oklahoma farmer.  It is a monument, a testimony, to a year of work, struggle, worry, and sacrifice.  Driving down the dusty roads, these monoliths dot the bleak flatness of the land, jutting above the horizon - an interruption to the monotony and a constant reminder of the farmer's failure or success.  Walking among them, you begin to feel small.  From a distance, they are the perfect aesthetic decoration.  Their rhythm, repetition, and form seem to go on forever, while their placement feels as if only a god could have created such perfection.  For me, the circular spirals of the bales are synonymous with the constant cycle of growth, destruction, and rebirth found in the rural setting of my youth as well as the transition from innocence to knowing.  The farm and everything on it is ruled by both the seasons of the year and the seasons of life.  Each day is a mixture of beauty and bane, dawning and death; all things rising toward the sky and then bleeding back into the earth.