Through technical and pictorial contradictions, “Perilous Journey” paintings invoke the tensions that between our attempts to live placid normal lives, in circumstances that should call us to urgent action.

I am recently interested in a concept called “hypernormalization,” the acceptance of a simplified or distorted version of reality, or the belief that a broken system is normal. The term was coined by Russian historian Alexei Yurchak to describe the final days of the Soviet Union. In these paintings, domesticity in the form of things like dogs, wallpaper and flower vases are balanced by thick scrapes of tornadoes, rats, and threatening masks. A balance of the placid and the uncomfortable…