My paintings are derived from close visual observation of subjects that are primarily manufactured items. I find beauty in these items, and I enjoy the challenge of accurately re-creating them in paint. For me, a smooth panel, free of the interrupting canvas texture, is the ideal surface on which to paint.

I am interested in surfaces and textures—both physical and optical. My paintings are experiments comprised of shapes, lines, shapes within shapes, color runs, and bleeds. They are like hard-edged paintings, with flats of color composed in geometric arrangements, but they are developed through layers over a period of time, and have softer edges. The effect is akin to that of patinas created by natural processes, with pigments dispersed in the fabric of the support, suggesting a historical and structured narrative.

The work of art makes the statement or it does not. Look. Listen. Feel. Decide. For when the observation occurs, the visual experience becomes complete.

My paintings explore re-imagined nostalgia and self-help as a distraction from the everyday. These narrative depictions of new or recreated experiences are salves for my subjects’ self-loathing, fear, and boredom. My process oscillates between predetermined and intuitive painting. Each approach takes its turn as remedy and provoker, altering the power dynamic between my compositions and myself. The commonality between approaches manifests in one shared goal: like the excitement of recalling a memory or making a new discovery, in each piece I aim to conjure a moment

I’ve had an interest in drawing, and portraiture in particular, since I started out as an artist at a very early age. My motivation to continuously draw over the years has led (quite by accident) to what has turned out to be what I’m hoping is an individual kind of mark-making. Since around the turn of this century, this body of work has been my formal playground for line, texture, volume, form, and so on, along with what has turned out also to be a subtle (or not so subtle) commentary on self-image in our current popular culture that seems to be asking, Who’s to say what’s beautiful?

“We live in a linguistic culture and everything has to be turned into language. People don’t understand anything until you’ve explained it.” This is a form of visual obtuseness that comes from being raised on television—“which absolutely deadens the imagination and deadens the senses. You just sit there with your mouth open.” –Emma Brockes, quoting Carl Andre, in “I’m a Hopeless Drawer— and a Terrible Painter,” 2013

Slipping in and out of the familiar through abstract mark-making, my paintings draw parallels between nature and human nature. Paint application ranges from thin, willowy, fanglike strokes to thick juicy plumages of clustered marks. These shapes coalesce into landscape and figure, eventually dissipating into abstract impressions. My hope is that viewers will encounter their inner realities by engaging the work’s limbo state.

Whether highly designed or purely utilitarian, there is no denying the simple elegance and beauty of teacups and teapots. Drinking tea goes back thousands of years. Its history is complicated and spreads across multiple cultures. Tea ceremonies, customs, and rituals arose where tea vessels play an important and necessary role. Asian tea ceremonies and customs contain an adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday life.1 Europeans engage in rituals of high tea or afternoon tea, while the American tea culture can trace its roots back to the Dutch settlers.

Dressing up the natural realm of everyday life brings me pleasure. Like cropping the flap of a dog’s ear, I tailor aspects of reality to enhance or conceal true circumstances. With this comes a sense of control that I carry as I navigate daily living. But the authority of choice is never without the leaking of the subconscious. I may give my hand permission to roam a drawing surface freely, without intention, but it will never perform marks without learned habits. However, this contradiction of naturalness and construction provides an exciting place to live.

My work begins as an experiment with the possibilities of collage on a variety of surfaces or backgrounds. From building a believable domestic interior on flat areas of color and pattern to transforming these patterns into geometric landscapes, the collaged elements create conceptual spaces and immediate psychological realities. Essential to the work is the scale relationship between the collaged and the painted elements; this relationship allows the work to confront ideas of image versus reality, depth, and depthlessness.