Improbable Outcomes

Improbable Outcomes is a series of paintings about the movements that bring us to where we are: flows, attractions, repulsions, accumulations, and direction. I see everything that has happened, to me and to the world, as a chain of improbable events that in hindsight was always inevitable. That movement unfolds across centuries, in how land was formed and how peoples have been suppressed and persecuted, and also in the moment-to-moment witnessing of life.

The paintings themselves are improbable. They are improvised, with nothing planned beyond an evolving palette. I paint with the idea of colors vibrating against one another; which color will vibrate next to which is decided by a plan that forms as I work. At the same time, I clarify the composition the painting is making: the rates of flow, and the directions set up by the colors and by the marks themselves. Each painting is the product of hundreds of choices that could have gone slightly or radically differently.

The series holds both wonder and disturbance: gratitude for being born into safety, options, and relative peace, and awareness that for so many people, in so many places, life has turned out otherwise. I complete each painting through performance, activating it with my body and improvised soundscapes, a final layer that is visceral and bound to time.

THE FILM

August, 2025 Mérida, México