"My paintings focus on the city and the random fractal patterns formed by integrating road maps with satellite images. For the past several years my work has explored the self-similar patterns that occur freely in nature. These fractal patterns have the same contours when focusing in or zooming out, so that a grain of sand can have the same outline as the coastline of a continent. My current work extends this to urban cityscapes that repeat the same shapes and structures across different scales. Each element holds within it the same properties as the larger system. Dense areas alternate with empty space. Small networks and clusters can have the same outlines as city limits and borders.
I try to create a sense of isolation, fantasy and exaggeration by using the overhead perspective of the satellite, void of inhabitants, and by disrupting the cityscape below with scratches, scrape marks and bleached-out light. These gestures visually tear into the repetitive fabric of the cityscape, eating into the surface like atmospheric disturbances. I then carefully layer a filigree of collaged roads that hold everything together in a web. The final painting is encased in multiple layers of mediums and varnish to create a totally smooth, flat surface.
I see my paintings in the tradition of the Hudson River School painters who used perspective, magnified scale and dramatic lighting to explore the sublime, the feeling of rapture or awe caused by the beauty and terror of nature. I use the same effects to visualize a modern sublime where technology magnifies the patterns of urban self-similarity."
-Roy Kinzer, 2009
Download Resume (Word)
