oil on canvas | 60" x 36"

With this and similar paintings I imagined them as exhibiting characteristics of biological organisms. Considering how a flower needs to reproduce through pollination, I asked myself what does a painting need? A painting needs only to exist, to be looked at by humans, and to hold an interest. Those are the purposes of a Painting. Being bought or having provenance or being thought of as "cool" or "great" or "good" or "matching the drapes" are human concerns and hold no interest for the painting. To exist is the easy part. Just be. To be looked at by humans and grab their attention requires something that we are instinctively programmed to look at. Like a bee is programmed to be attracted to a flower, humans are programmed to seek out and focus attention to other human faces. The psychological phenomenon "Pareidolia" refers to a tendency for humans to single out patterns or images within random imagery, like seeing a face in the clouds or in a grilled cheese sandwich. This is because we have gained an evolutionary advantage to look for other faces in randomness like jungle leaves. We single out a face and relate to it and communicate with it. Now that the painting has the attention factor of a striking human face it needs a staying factor, or something about it to make the viewer want to keep looking at it and hold an interest. An emotionless face is difficult to relate to and impossible to gauge intent, which creates confusion fear and doubt and introduces tension. This is a great way to hold attention, and adding extra abstract elements in a vaguely grotesque context compounds the perplexing nature of the painting. Now the Painting has achieved its goals successfully.

-A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 60" x 36"

Also following the same conceptual tools of "Amylase of the Uncanny Valley", this piece reflects a numb complacency of a Western society where forefront concerns would be considered outlandish whining about comforts and entitled luxuries to much of the less advanced world where they have to worry about not dying every day.

- A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 48" x 29"

Following the same concept as "Amylase of the Uncanny Valley", this painting also illustrates an idea of a meditative perspective exercise where we observe that removed from our own personal experiences, inner turmoils, contemplations and conversations with one another that there are billions of other, almost identical experiences happening at the same time in an endless sea of perpetuity like a loud swarm of bees or the random noise from TV static.

- A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 40" x 30"

As in other of my disruptive color filled paintings, the colored shape represents pervasive and ever-present systems beyond our control that can be maddening when we try to understand or interfere with them.

-A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 24" x 20"

The bewildering vagueness and disruptive nature of this painting is meant to confuse and keep the viewer engaged with conflicting feelings of calmness and underlying horror. The softness of the blues and the hinting of a seemingly innocent figure subtly contrast with the unsettling disembodiment of the features and the allusion that something may be happening but is being censored.

-A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 36" x 24"

Following a favorite theme, this is a representation of the stupefying ability of the bombardment of external stimuli and incomprehensible information.

-A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 48" x 24"

An apathetic and dumb-founded face is stupefied by an imposing representation of a complex mathematical omnipresent system of universal control, which cannot be comprehended and is therefore ignored or denied.

-A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 29" x 48"

Referring to a multitude of sounds and noise, this painting attempts to capture a sense of anxiety from extreme sensory and intellectual stimulation and the trepidation towards exposure to the new and drastically different.

-A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 30" x 24"

This is a self portrait depicting my own confusion, conflict, and intellectual infancy, inspired by Baroque "Merry Toper" paintings of jolly drunks. My paintings are the product of introspectively investigating everything that has made me, so this self portrait is myself within myself observing myself both internally and externally.

-A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 36" x 29"

Acting as an impression of the feelings that come up when facing impermanence of life and the idea that a consciousness may one day cease to exist, this painting is a reminder of the certainty of death and its ominous mystery.

- A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 29" x 36"

Set in seaside landscape on a bleak day at the beach of the Connecticut city where I now live, this painting reflects a sense of displacement and a shift in perspective as I relocated myself to a new and different place, far removed from the rural Vermont towns I grew up in.

-A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 36" x 44"

A somewhat nightmarish allegory, this painting references a tendency to foolishly be preoccupied by personal conflicts while ignoring a universally pervasive and overhanging chaos that affects everything.

-A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 48" x 48"

This painting is meant to evoke conflicting feelings of jubilance and panic. The title references both the liquid color spewing from the birds, and the flood of intense emotion the piece illustrates.

-A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 32" x 24"

This painting is an exploration of fear and anxiety. The use of children as vulnerable figures and the color yellow have always been useful for me to attain a sense of subtle terror.

-A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 36" x 24"

I see this as a kind of self portrait. I have two brothers, an older and a younger, and I have always felt like a combination of the two. They are quite different from each other but they are both similar to me in different ways. I imagine this painting and myself as a Venn Diagram of them. There are also symbolic allusions to my views on religion and thoughts on the chaos of nature and the mathematical order it abides by.

-A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 28" x 38"

This painting has inspirations in the ancient Norse Creation mythology of the death of the Giant Y'Mir, and is simultaneously an expression of feelings towards my own Father's mortality. 

oil on canvas | 40" x 30"

This painting is a reflection of my views towards religion and the concept of faith as archaic tools of control which have more damaging affects than good in a rapidly changing and intermingling world.

-A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 32" x 48"

This painting illustrates an acceptance of mortality and the ignorance of what happens next. An acceptance of the possibility of non existence and a consciousness that would completely cease to be. I want this painting to express a feeling of death as a natural part of life that should be looked at with awe and not with fear.

-A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 24" x 24"

This Painting illustrates an impassive laziness and a sense of entitlement to solutions and answers to big questions.

- A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 80" x 12"

 Named after a song by the band Radiohead, this painting exhibits a comically dopey face that is meant to convey a sense of absurdity and self-contented ignorance. Ignorance of the workings of an infinitely complex universe, while maintaining an arrogance of certainty about its nature. The overall look and feel of the painting are intended to reflect this imposing and enigmatic concept.

oil on canvas | 80" x 12"

A companion piece to "Codex" and a reaction to its idea of an eternal struggle to understand the inexplicable, this painting evokes an acceptance of these struggles with perpetually accumulating questions and finds a meditative peace in the realization that desired answers may never come to the individual. Time and conscious awareness are not exclusive to our subjective selves and answers to the mysteries of the universe may reveal themselves to others at another time. 

-A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 51" x 33"

Inspired by Whistler's "Symphony in White" paintings, this painting is a portrait of White on multiple levels, an observation of the dissociative power of what we see and also an investigation of how my own "whiteness" has constructed who I am and how I see the world as being part of a comparatively comfortable and privileged group.

- A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 24" x 16"

I Imagine this painting as a kind of religious Icon. One that reveres reason, science and critical thought. The stripes increase in thickness as they go up in accordance with the Fibonacci sequence.

- A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 24" x 16"

Plateau of Man 1, 2, 3; These three paintings are not necessarily meant to act as a triptych but certainly could. They are meant to be visually alluring and disruptive. The titles and the overall feeling refer to a boredom of an advanced (western) society and a chronic ennui of it's comfortable and pampered people.

- A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 24" x 16"

Plateau of Man 1, 2, 3; These three paintings are not necessarily meant to act as a triptych but certainly could. They are meant to be visually alluring and disruptive. The titles and the overall feeling refer to a boredom of an advanced (western) society and a chronic ennui of it's comfortable and pampered people.

- A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 24" x 16"

Plateau of Man 1, 2, 3; These three paintings are not necessarily meant to act as a triptych but certainly could. They are meant to be visually alluring and disruptive. The titles and the overall feeling refer to a boredom of an advanced (western) society and a chronic ennui of it's comfortable and pampered people.

- A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 36" x 36"

Allegorically using the bridge, something that delivers us over a potential danger between a place we want to leave behind and a place we want to go, this painting illustrates a feeling of cautious hubris and complacent arrogance as figures dangerously seek out what entices them in a place of imposing danger while the safe path is ignored. 

- A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 24" x 24"

This one's title explains it all. This is the first painting in a series in a divergent style. the focus on this and the subsequent paintings in this mini-series is on the actual act of painting rather than the subject, though the subject comes in a close second. There is also symbolism of a kind of Sisyphean struggle.

- A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 24" x 24"

The third in it's mini-series, this painting is subtly influenced by Francis Bacon's painting "Study After Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X" and reflects how "place" can affect outlook. The house in this painting is in the very wealthy gated community in Connecticut where I temporarily live. In this piece I want to to express the underlying dark and sinister feeling I get from observing the super wealthy from within their community locked away from that that would defile their comfort and remind them of an outside world of the other 99 percent where there is suffering, physical labor, struggle and the aesthetically imperfect, and how their skewed and filtered view of the world and their place in it is passed on to endless future generations of elite who see an inherent superiority and importance in themselves for choosing to live a life dedicated to amassing personal wealth. The parenthetical title "Nigel" refers to a song by the band XTC.

- A. Churchill

oil on canvas | 24" x 24"

The second in a mini-series of a divergent painting style, this piece refers to an acceptance and embracing of uncertainty and ignorance as a tool for attaining knowledge and wisdom. The first step to learning is to acknowledge that there are things that you don't know.

-A. Churchill