Psychological Systems  

These select works examine the ways cognitive belief and function shape and manifest in physical behavior. Some pieces involve self-experimentation, in which I test ideas on myself both physically and mentally, while others draw on data from psychological studies and analyses to create images, forms, and patterns. Together, they visualize the transformation of thought into action as the beginning of recursive cycles of cognition leading to behavior, and behavior feeding back into cognition, and so on…

Psychopath

74 x 73 inches, colored pencil and graphite on paper

In this piece, I was thinking about the relationship between psychopaths and famous political leaders (the qualities that make a successful leader are often psychotic in nature), and about the mutation of psychopathic attributes over time, and within a species. On the left side of the piece, I listed a hybrid version of the clinical checklist for psychopathy, culled from various sources. I then connected these attributes (with physical lines) to the names of the most evil leaders throughout history, and the most successful presidents in US history, as anointed by internet voters. After linking these psychological attributes to my polarized list of historical leaders, I began to deconstruct these same links with the abstract forms in the center of the piece, which grew outward, organically. I drew a set of smaller shapes intuitively, trying to channel negative or positive energy through each, psychically. I then drew a dividing line down the center of the group - like a polarizing spine. I then began to copy these shapes, reversing them and redrawing them on the opposite side of the dividing line. The copies are more direct and specific around the spine, and more diffused and less exact as they move away towards the perimeter – like a magnetic field that weakens. Ultimately, these shapes were, to me, something akin to insects or bacteria that reproduced, mutated, or evolved across a field. They eventually invaded the text.

Noah Bot

83 x 69.5 inches, colored pencil and graphite on paper

Work commissioned by Darren Aronofsky for the film Noah. The drawing investigates the psychological motivations within linguistic identity and power dynamic shifts between a human and an artificial intelligence bot as they discuss the origins of religion and belief systems.

The John Problem

36.5 X 37.25 inches, colored pencil and graphite on shaped and collaged paper

This drawing is based on The Conjunction Fallacy, otherwise known as The Linda Problem. The fallacy was first articulated by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, cognitive psychologists who explored human decision-making. The fallacy highlights how we perceive meaning where there most likely isn’t any. The original study question is below:

Linda is thirty-one years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations. Which is more probable?

1. Linda is a bank teller. 2. Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement.

For this drawing, I formulated my own interpretation of the fallacy's premise, which both subverts the original question and references broader considerations about how we make consequential decisions when confronted with questions of meaning and significance.

Ben><Ken

21 x 22 inches, Graphite and colored pencil on paper

Drawing that investigates psychological and emotional motivations for behavior that escalate through contingent responses—where a small act is answered by another, prompting an incrementally larger act in return, and so on. The concept draws on Friedrich Glasl’s escalation model of conflict, which analyzes how interactions can spiral into intensifying cycles of violence.

The Go Getter

34.75 x 25.3 inches, Graphite and colored pencil on shaped paper

This drawing explores the psychological and emotional motivations of an individual to please and overachieve in response to a directive or order. This process reflects the foot-in-the-door technique, in which people comply with progressively greater demands due to a desire to please or maintain consistency. The work also references the psychology of ritualized initiation practices, such as those found in fraternities, where small tasks accumulate into more extreme actions. Names within the series are drawn from hurricanes, underscoring the intensifying, spiraling nature of escalation.

Itch Study, December 5

19 x 13 inches, Colored pencil and graphite on photographic print

For these self-portraits (full series linked HERE) first printed a photograph of myself from that day, then closed my eyes and concentrated on the sensation of an itch, for an hour. Each time one occurred, I marked its location on the photograph, mapping the points across my face. I then connected this data into a pattern, forming a shape out of a transient phenomenon. The process became a way of investigating the sensation of an itch, which, for me, felt tied to my psychological state of mind—both painful and pleasurable to scratch. Using myself as a test subject also connects to the history of self-study in psychology.

Last Week

78 x 68 inches, colored pencil and graphite on paper

This drawing depicts an individual’s consumption of the last meals of six executed killers:

  1. Aileen Wuornos — serial killer; executed in Florida in 2002 by lethal injection

  2. John Wayne Gacy — serial murderer; executed in Illinois in 1994 by lethal injection

  3. Ted Bundy — serial killer; executed in Florida in 1989 by electrocution

  4. Timothy McVeigh — domestic terrorist/mass murderer; executed in Oklahoma in 2001 by lethal injection

  5. Velma Barfield — murderer; executed in North Carolina in 1984 by lethal injection

  6. Gary Carl Simmons, Jr. — murderer; executed in Mississippi in 2012 by lethal injection

I thought of these meals as a kind of recipe list or diet plan, all ending with the same fate as those who consumed them. The foods themselves are ordinary, even familiar, which creates a disturbing sense of connection to the killers as human beings—funny and sad, but ultimately tragic. They also point to the influence of advertising and the chemical effects of junk food, which led me to think about nature versus nurture. Could any of us have ended up like them, depending on chance—where we were born, how we were raised, who shaped our thinking? This tension is echoed in the alternating use of black and white, positive and negative.

Love Letters (diptych)

9 x 12 inches (each panel), acrylic on birch panels

These works, a diptych, explore the psychology of language as it appears in spam messages and scam plots. Such messages rely on patterned phrasing designed to elicit responses, with the order and type of language functioning like a key to unlock particular desires. The left panel is based on a spam email I received from someone or something named “Beyonce.” The right panel is my response, an appropriated and modified love letter originally written by Napoleon to Josephine. I actually replied to the spam email before translating the exchange into these paintings…

Self Portraits with Sun Spots

Each: 19 x 13 inches, photographic print

For these works, I documented my own face as if it were a microplanet and fused these photographs with NASA images of sunspot patterns from the same day. The results shocked me, as the combined surfaces looked uncannily real, as if my face had been altered by an external force that left marks resembling lesions or birthmarks. The project reflects on how sunspot activity and climate exert power over human behavior, shaping decisions about where we go, what we eat, how our bodies change, and how our moods rise and fall. These physical and emotional shifts expose the subtle ways in which environmental patterns influence not only the planet at large but also the intimate, everyday rhythms of individual lives.

See the full series HERE

The Gaslighters

*Click on image to run program live

An endless, unpredictable text-chat generator where two voices accuse each other of shadowy deeds while running real-time pop-psych evaluations, tossing questionable emojis, divulging “military secrets,” and spinning political theories. At random intervals their messages swap positions, scrambling the roles of gaslighter and gaslit so both are complicit in the escalation—or its illusion. Paranoid questions and Barthelme-like non sequiturs oscillate between lonely, goofy, absurd, and threatening, ratcheting discomfort as the exchange spirals into self-negation, finally collapsing into a single, unified provocateur.

Hypnosis

Stop Motion Animation, dimensions variable

*Click on image for animation

A recursive animation that explores the slow, incremental transformation of a mental state through rotating objects. The repetitive motion is meant to evoke the psychology of hypnosis, where cycles of focus and suggestion gradually alter perception and consciousness.