In July 2008 I was invited by Andrea Hildebrandt to have a solo show at her gallery Kunstraum Gruenerhund in the Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood of Berlin. I decided to create an entirely new body of work in the two months before the show. At this time my wife was teaching in Florence Italy and had just finished her MFA at Indiana University. I worked in her large bright MFA studio while she was away, allowing me to approach the work more openly. I only held vague thoughts in my head about the varied history of Berlin, colonial exoticism and the idea of a kind of revived global Wiemar culture. The outcome was a break with my previous work; the process became more fluid and experimental. I began using more enamel, airbrush and switched my painting media exclusively to acrylic for the speed. I also began thinking about 3-dimensional work which led to experiments with casting (this was the catalyst for later work and a further exploration of 3-dimensional forms). It seemed as if the work was complete before I realized it, and the next thing I knew I was packing it up to send to Berlin while I prepared to go to Florence to accompany Allyson for the final month of her tenure there.
In the end I think this body of work was a springboard, that freedom and fluidity together with an abrupt break from the work allowed me to get out and then get away from many issues that had been lying dormant in the work. In retrospect it seems as if it was a pivotal moment in my art making career.