My paintings are a re-imagined portrayal of living in contemporary southern suburbia. They are intuitive responses to everyday surroundings that are transformed into unfamiliar and fictional situations. The image emerges through a process of erasure, mending, and embellishment of paint and collage. The use of collage as a preconceived “mark” forces the image and materials to interact with one another. Raised in a house in which the interior was a monochromatic brown, I now indulge in ebullient color.

My recent paintings express my own ambivalence and trepidation in relation to the contemporary male’s transition into adulthood. They are made of collages with images appropriated from found photographs of myself and close friends, and their formal and compositional elements suggest an ambiguous narrative.

I am most interested in moments where subject matter and paint collide—when figuration conveys a sense of urgency, and refinement is overruled by directness. At the start, there is no direction, or subject, or context. Painting is about figuring out these things. I question what I make, and the analysis leads me through creation, abandonment, and transformation. The forms emerge and dissolve, becoming embedded or hidden within layers of paint that are deposited over time. They co-evolve with their meaning, recognizing each other as counterparts.

My work currently references aspects of advertising, cartoon, abstract painting, illustration, and digital media to generate spatial and psychological suggestions.