In 2001 I moved to southern Illinois from Glasgow, Scotland. While in Scotland my work dealt with objects connoting certain social conditions. The change in my environment and in patterns of living effected a change of focus in my work as well. These paintings document mundane contemporary landscapes and urban environments and interiors throughout the United States of America. The images are taken from an inventory of material that was gathered over a period of 18 months. The process by which the photographs are used to produce paintings involves several translations.

" Images tell us something, and, if possible,
soething other than which meets the eye."
-Juan Munoz That which does not meet the eye is what I find myself most often interested in when constructing an image. My hope is that with these images, a relationship with the audience can be distinguished so that a viewer will at once experience the role of the observer and that of being under observation as well. I am attracted to working with light as a means to conjure particular moods and atmospheres that derive meaning from absence, obsession, and memory.

It was once said of my paintings that they were like, "hymns sung with dirty words." This description is accurate in that my irreverence is embedded with in aesthetics and not an overt subversion of convention. I work purposefully with in the tradition of classical realism to create an ideal image that takes advantage of its relationship to the exterior world yet answers to no exterior conversation; creating an insular and emblematic image that puts the viewer in a constant state of apperception.

My paintings are constructed with a modern themed narrative. I use figures to play out the stories I am telling. The images are strong, depicting brief moments in time. These oils are large and the technique is classical, but these paintings live in a modern world. I work with these paintings for months so I run the gamut of emotions. I'm trying to tap into that unconscious feed of energy in life we can't see, smell, or touch. I want that energy and emotion to be present in my paintings.

Inspired by systems that contain examples of simultaneous order and chaos, my mixed media, wall-based installations reference biology, natural disasters, and computer imagery. Imagined interactions between disparate systems, and the unpredictable outcomes of such encounters, provide a point-of-departure for works that divulge equal parts fact and fiction. The systems that appear in my work are hybrids, borrowing freely from a wide range of existing patterns and departing from them at will.