Originally conceived in the immediate aftermath of the 9-11 attacks, this series of paintings has documented the sociopolitical topics of the day. They came to fruition late in the George W. Bush years, spanned the Obama years, and are now ripe in the era of Trump.

The paintings derive experientially from my day-to-day pay-the-bills architectural conservation work, where I spend ample time on multiple union construction sites. The bathrooms on these sites are crudely built and maintained temporary shanty-like constructions rigged with rudimentary plumbing and electricity. It is in these bathrooms that I covertly document the drawings, writings, and dialogues that adorn the walls. I shoot photos of these images using my cell phone camera capturing the crude visual aesthetic and conveying the true context of the appurtenant communications as written.

The men who leave these hieroglyphs are (ordinary) working class patriotic Americans, albeit New Yorkers. They earn good wages, complete with health and retirement benefits, for the most part have wives and children, own homes, and are often politically active. Yet given a moment of privacy, absent their peers and the accompanying need to impress their bravado upon, within these rank stalls, they are the authors/illustrators of these racist, sexist, homophobic, and xenophobic ideological regurgitation’s. While the resultant aesthetic, and verbiage, may be unique to this strata of society and these specific men, the messages and mentality are not. They are an ubiquitous reflection and product of our culture, no different than the politicians whom fan the flames of divisiveness with their speeches of spite based on these same stereotypes and falsehoods, or the conservative religious leaders whom justify tragedies such as 9-11 as God’s punishment for our tolerance of mere diversity.

I paint these paintings as faithfully as possible, not editing the messages, and reproducing the various handwritings and scrawls in as exact a manner as I am capable of. It is important that it is known that these words and depictions are not mine, I am merely a conduit through which these all too human attitudes are exposed.