… in which “Partisan” is pondered from Pelham to Paris
I recently finished the last of my Partisan paintings—fifty oil paintings that circle around the themes of polarization, binary reasoning, and identity. At its core, the project asks: Who am “I” within an ever-shifting cultural and political context?
Each painting carries this question differently. Using a strictly blue-and-red palette, the works mirror the stark contrasts of political consciousness while allowing for layered nuance. Their titles borrow from cultural narratives, linguistic quirks, and psychological patterns— signposts that hint at the many ways we construct (and deconstruct) who we are culturally and politically.
This exploration isn’t just conceptual; it’s personal. Growing up racially ambiguous in the U.S. has shaped my sense of identity to be flexible, less attached to a hardened idea of racial category. The variety of techniques in Partisan are my way of reifying that lens.
I also want to give a shout out to Nicky Ginsberg, of NG Art Creative Residency, who hosted me in 2018, where I made the initial drawings that would lead to this series– where I became infatuated with Sennelier’s Alizarin Crimson and Gamblin’s Pthalo Tourquoise, which would become the signature colors of the series.
Process & Technique
Every painting begins with a drawing, often from film stills—my nod to American mythmaking. The sketches, done in charcoal, are scanned and transformed into negatives, which I then expose onto photosensitive silkscreens.
Charcoal sketch / negative / silk screen
I look back and forth between the sketch and the original photo to develop an underpainting, blurred to varying degrees, directly on the panel.
In some of the paintings, the silk screen is applied as the top layer, setting up a visual tension: the soft blur of the underlying portrait against the hard edges of the overprint. In others, I rework parts of the portrait more “realistically” when needed, adding an inferred psychology into the surface. Palette knife work cuts through throughout the process, building atmosphere and grit, while the silkscreen keeps everything tethered to the tension of precision versus ambiguity.
Silk screen in oil over blurred portrait – Partisan (Motivated Cognition)
Materials & Details
Most of the works are oil on wood panels, save two—Partisan (Popular Unconscious) and Partisan (Fortresses of Tautology)—are on copper. I tried copper partly out of curiosity, partly for the luminous surface, and partly because I’d just learned that linseed oil paints actually bond with copper at a molecular level—and that bond only grows stronger over time. The idea of the painting itself becoming more stable, more secure, as the years pass really stuck with me.
Sketch on wood panel / a more detailed rendering of the eyes – Partisan (Balance Fallacy)
Dimensions vary around 30 x 20 cm, keeping the format intimate and direct.
The full body of work came together between 2019 and 2024, a span of time that felt as turbulent and polarized as the paintings themselves.
