However much we may want to, we cannot exist in the world discreetly. People transform every environment around them with the implications they carry, and even if we do not choose to wave that banner of influence, we cannot cast it aside either, and it sets us apart.

In my paintings, the human form is used as a symbol carrying possibilities; people are deliberately vague of countenance so as not to be individualized. What matters is that they are there. Where there are people, there is memory, imagination, misunderstanding, history—too much to name. The characters in my paintings are quiet, inert, and observant. These figures are always among the first elements put onto canvas, and the remainder of the scene is built around them. In our unique and often lamented dictatorial position within nature and the world, we cannot exist any other way.