How The Light Gets In

“How The Light Gets In” Solo Show

At Gallery MAR in Park City, UT
opening November 7th, 2025

This show features 20 new, contemporary encaustic and cold wax paintings that explore how windows shape our view.

Originally, my inspiration for the show came from a conversation with Maren Mullin from Gallery MAR which made me think about how my paintings feel like they are adding an extra window in their house, and I’ve always loved that idea of an easy to install window - hammer in nail, hang painting, presto! But I thought “Windows” as a show title, well, I thought it was rather boring, and what kept playing over in my head was the line from Leonard Cohen’s Anthem - which to me is a poem, but perhaps is actually a song.

The line, How the Light Gets In, comes from the chorus and goes like:

Ring the bells that can still ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

Every new painting I make builds upon the last painting I made. Each one is part of a long evolution of learning, experimenting, improving, and changing. I think collectors will see a lot of my history in these paintings, what I am most known for - my atmospheric landscapes of course, but there’s a twist. I’m looking at old ideas from a new angle, perhaps from a different window of the same house. I’ve done a number of diptychs and triptychs over the years, but these new groupings are really interesting to me, and I liked playing around with how I could envision windows in a house looking out onto a landscape, like how an architect might.

Now Cohen didn’t always like to explain what his songs meant, but he did give some indication of his meaning, which you can read here. My take on this song - I think it’s about standing up for what you think is right, and about trying to find hope and joy wherever you can. We’re not going to get it perfect, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. It applies to everything - the moment we are living in as a nation, the work we do for our jobs, and the life we lead personally, alongside our friends, family, and community.

The light that shines through the cracks shows what needs to be done. So now, go make an effort. Do something, anything.

So to be very literal in the meaning of my show - windows let light in. In a way, they are the “cracks” in a building - they let the light in and let us see out. Windows are portals that transport us, challenge us, and motivate us to action. I mean, how often have I woken up excited to look out the window to see how much snow we got, inspiring me to go outside and ski!

The collection is made up of both cold wax and encaustic paintings, just like last year’s show. Perhaps this is strange, two different mediums from the same artist, but it’s what I’m fascinated by and I can’t help but do both - what I know well and what I am learning, but turns out I’m learning a lot with both.

Going back to my theme of windows and how the light gets in, I am using the transparency of the beeswax to let the light in. With a block of encaustic or a jar of cold wax, you can’t see through it, but when you apply it in a thin layer, it’s like a pane of glass, a film, or a veil. This is my favorite thing about the medium, this ability to create a thin, transparent layer while also creating a barrier between said layers, not as a way of separation, but as a way of addition without blurring the layers.

To read more about my thoughts for the show, and see some my sketchbook to create this series, please check out my Substack:

In Preparation for “How the Light Gets In” Show

“How The Light Gets In” Show Opens