Inconsiderately Happy | Galleri Urbane | Dallas, TX | 2022

The title Inconsiderately Happy came out of a conversation with friends over dinner, where we landed on Dolly Parton’s “The Grass is Blue.” There’s a line in the song that really stuck with me: “Can one end their sorrow, just cross over it and into that realm of insensitive bliss?” It’s such a strange, sad, and kind of beautiful idea. That someone could move so cleanly past grief that they become blind to other people’s pain. I kept thinking about that kind of happiness, the kind that feels almost aggressive in the wrong context. What does joy look like when it’s not shared? When it becomes too loud, too much, or lands in the room like a punchline no one asked for?

That question started to bleed into my painting. I began to think about how certain gestures, especially in abstract painting, can carry similar contradictions. They’re exuberant, bold, overconfident even. And sometimes, they’re just annoying. Like overly enthusiastic laughter during a mediocre movie, or a roommate blaring music while you’re trying to focus. The joy is real for someone, but it disrupts everything else around it. That friction felt rich.

I’ve always been suspicious of painting clichés: the splatter, the gradient, the neon glow. But those tropes have also become so worn out that they’re kind of empty again, and that emptiness is interesting to me. In this show, I gave myself permission to step into that “other side” of painting. To explore gestures I’d normally dismiss as kitsch or toothless. One day in the studio I noticed a painting I was working on included a jagged green form. A cartoonish blade of grass. It was absurd, but it made sense. That single element started to link up with Dolly’s lyric, and suddenly the painting felt like it was holding a kind of contradiction too. This dumb little leaf form, full of vitality, in a painting about emotional conflict.

That’s really what this show is about: the bitter irony of joy. Not in the sense of mocking happiness, but in trying to paint it honestly, with all its complications. I wanted the work to reflect the weirdness of feeling good when others don’t. Or feeling bad about feeling good. Painting has always been this battleground of taste and gesture, and I think there’s value in pushing through the things I used to avoid. I’m not looking to reclaim the splatter or the gradient. I’m just trying to find something worth saying inside the noise. There’s always something new to discover in the old. Even if it starts with something as ridiculous as a lime-green squiggle masquerading as grass.