It all began with an office-supply van. The Clips & Ruler paintings are decoratively patterned works, depicting dozens of paper clips arrayed around a central reflecting ruler, but their execution questions their own decorativeness. They depict modern commercial objects in whimsical, noncommercial ways, and struggle between the processes of modern-day technology, and the language of expressionist painting. They fully acknowledge the strong, inevitable influence of Johns, yet distance themselves from those clinical works to reflect the contemporary dilemma individuality versus conformity.