I make paintings and objects that represent figures as geological and psychological extensions of landscape. My paintings depict hermits, wanderers, ramblers—a visual trope of a performative body susceptible to the elements. Through narrative frameworks, I mine vernacular narratives, fantasy, folkloric geographies, and a discourse on representation. Folklore is a register for renegotiating the nature of perception, sacrificing realism in order to gain a new truth. Denaturalizing a subject through the carnivalesque exposes the underbelly of sensation and perception. I use specific painting devices to challenge a fixed perception of self, queerness, landscape, and desire. How does the impulsive private self, in a space rendered abundant and strange, reshape our understanding of public persona? There is a constant interstitial dance between myth and reality, an experimentation with romanticism, all fleshed-out against a backdrop of a dangerously alluring landscape on its last leg.