I use the process of painting to examine relationships and break down distinctions between nature/technology, natural/artificial, material/immaterial, subject/object. My practice embraces what Stacy Alaimo calls tans-corporeality: "the time-space where human corporeality, in all its material fleshiness, is inseparable from nature.” In this way, the resulting images/objects emphasize the embodied, relational, affective interconnections that occur between human and non-human nature.

Materials are assembled, applied, removed and altered. I work with natural specimens such as mushrooms, moss, cocoa petals, and rosebuds, mixed with beeswax, liquid rubber and latex, oil paint and pigments. Working in a symbiotic partnership with the materials, the works are allowed to “emerge”spontaneously. The results are assemblages of natural elements whereby the biological processes of mutation, contamination, decay, generation, emergence and metamorphosis serve as modes of inquiry into the production of novel forms. The canvas becomes an arena for investigation [Rosenberg] and what accumulates on the surface acts as a record of an event, a moment, or what could be considered an act of nature [Cezanne*].

I always return to the relationship between painting and nature— a relationship that is dynamic, evolving and embedded in my process.

Image: Kris Casey, From so simple a Beginning (detail), 2019 Oil, acrylic, mica pigment, enamel, moss, and botanicals on canvas, 60" x 72"