The local landscape is an icon, sanctified by the worldview of the people who live there. Humans make their gods and religions out of resources that sustain them, and Heaven is an idealized portrait of our own homes. These paintings, however, are not about gods and religions. They are about the choice western culture has made to deal with our local and global environments mechanistically. Nothing is alive, everything is for the taking. Though it would be unreasonable to glorify untamed nature as an ideal utopia and bash all industry and production as its unholy antithesis, there is a balance to be found. The textures, colors, lush forms, and proximity of living things in these paintings are not represented other than how I found them in my travels to Ecuador. By invading them with sawdust and tar and burning sections, I recreated the acts of slash burn agriculture, Ecuadorian oil spills, and the degrading effects of excessive logging. I subverted my canvases much as it happens in the world, indiscriminately, whose jarring contrasts aim to produce an emotional response. In the end, it doesnít matter that this is Ecuador, this is everywhere.