My artistic practice emerges from the embodied experience of inherited retinal disorder and progressive vision loss. Against cultural narratives that render blindness as metaphor, deficit, or stereotype, my work intervenes to critique and reconfigure how blindness is represented. In doing so, I position blindness not as lack, but as a generative standpoint from which to question dominant assumptions about vision, knowledge, and identity.
Accessibility is integral to this project—not as supplemental accommodation, but as an aesthetic and relational methodology. I draw on concepts of access intimacy and access aesthetics to embed accessibility into the very structure of my work. This approach reframes access as a site of meaning-making, where the conditions of engagement themselves become part of the artwork. In this sense, access operates both as medium and critique, inviting audiences into reimagined forms of encounter and expanded possibilities of shared experience.
Blind by Definition
Blind by Definition is a series that examines how language constructs and distorts cultural perceptions of vision. Drawing from dictionary entries, I examine how blindness is defined, labeled, and reduced to metaphor. These seemingly neutral definitions carry centuries of assumptions, framing blindness as absence, deficiency, or failure to perceive.
Unforeseen Impact
Unforeseen Impact is a series that documents everyday collisions as comic moments, drawing from my lived experience navigating the world with low vision. I use humor to explore how objects in public pathways can injure, embarrass, or exclude. By highlighting these impacts, the work invites viewers to consider the reality of moving through spaces designed with the assumption that everyone can see unanticipated obstacles before encountering them. These assumptions not only hinder access for the blind and low-vision community but also underscore how barrier-free design enables everyone to move more comfortably through those spaces.
Sight Gag
Sight Gag is a series of paintings that reframe imagery from the 1977 Scholastic book of comics, What’s New, Mister Magoo?, to explore how ableism is embedded in popular culture and how it shapes the lives of the blind and low-vision community. The work reflects on both the systemic forces that perpetuate stereotypes and the internalized attitudes that can take root within the community itself. The series invites viewers to question what appears harmless and to recognize its consequences, turning the joke back on itself and challenging audiences to see what has too often gone unacknowledged.
The Faith of Knowing (2013 – 2024)
Crossing the boundaries of time, stories shape our understanding of the world and inform my artistic practice. This work delves into the narratives that have shaped my comprehension of life’s mysteries, particularly those shared by my Irish immigrant father, whose illustrious tales captivated my childhood imagination. Influenced by visual storytelling mediums like picture books, cartoons, and newspaper comics, I draw from materials deeply rooted in my upbringing as the son of a painting contractor—using home siding, book pages, and house paint to recontextualize forms from memory. This process fosters connections between images, text, and materials, exploring the rich mashup of narratives surrounding religion, heritage, identity, and the origins of life.