In my work I create highly stylized versions of nature, painting patterns visible in the natural world using pastel hues and poplike paint-by-number repetition. Inspired by subjects ranging from battlefields, war propaganda, literature, and idyllic gardens, I use the landscape as impression, abstraction, symbol, and sentiment. Each painting makes a fantastical analogy between an actual place and the myths and remnants of the real events associated with that place.

In our everyday lives, there are times when we are gripped with a whole-body pleasure, a spine-thrill of delight, when time seems to slow and we are hyper-present. I am trying to understand what it is about these extraordinary experiences in real life, moments in stories or movies that move me so: the way Elwood P. Dowd says “And the evening wore on” in Harvey . . .the recording of my father’s voice telling “The Story of the Rose” . . . the way the light falls on my little girl’s hair . . . All these moments have the impact of something pure and raw. Since 2002, my paintings have focused

Building a new body of work begins with pulling in thoughts and ideas and trying them out to see if they'll go anywhere. For months, I started and stopped, sanded and scraped, ultimately rejecting all efforts as false beginnings. Identity of self and content negotiated for placement in the paintings. A chronic problem with over thinking consistently tried to reassert itself. Overt visual inspirations included a piece of vintage pottery, flowers drawn from a kitschy gift book, and many evenings of watching the varying pinks and receding purples of backyard sunsets.

The aim of the work is to seduce and give pleasure through imagery that is social and accessible. To suspend the viewer's interaction with the work, I deploy "hooks" such as graphic imagery and lurid color to create an overflowing, lascivious world of flowering, fluid fragments that are theatrical and explore many possible genders and sexual situations. Pink is used as a color of identification, which is descriptive of all of our internal bodies. Its feminine connotations are embraced and simultaneously upended to create aggressive images.

My experience is my production. As a recent homeowner and dedicated do-it-yourselfer, I have been teaching myself yard work. Watering, mowing and weeding and countless other chores devoted to the garden have become my plight, or rather inspiration for subject matter. Vast stretches of dirt have been made green again. Very little of this has to do with nature. Friends and neighbors alike vie for the trophy lawn, participating in a turf war over curb appeal. Nature has become objectified; the backyard a modern day fetish.

Deal Abandoned Pleasures
Save, Conserve, Recycle
Reach Maximum Capacity
Observe Fields
With Pregnant Pause
XX, In the Making of
Take a Break, Know Better
Read Camus
Bend Feathers
Risk Boredom
Identify Burial Patterns

Swing Forward
Fear Indifference, Read Manifestos
Trust Magnetic Poles (get out of the middle)

Preserve a Fading Accent
Move Studios in Winter
Give Benefit to Your Doubt
Differentiate Bass Structures

Watch Sugar Dissolve
An Open End (without punctuation)

I paint in a reductivist manner relying on surface and spatial tensions to convey the content. The imagery in my work is based on childhood memory, appropriated diagrams and reflections of the visual realities of urban decay. My work expresses a continuing dynamic of time, experience, and personal perception.

In this post-modern environment I realize that my ideas may seem antiquated and irrelevant. However, I still believe that abstract painting has the capability to express the complex nature of the human drama we call life.

While painting this series, I was thinking a lot about homemade tattoos. These tattoos are borne out of necessity by someone who is desperate to express themselves, and I think a lot about the scratchy tender aesthetics of this. Even the term “homemade tattoo,” such an unlikely word combination, struck a chord as well for some reason I can’t quite articulate. The process of tattooing consists of tiny dots making an image. Prior to this work, the tiny dots in my paintings were derived from images of embroidery and textiles. Both the tattoo and the embroidery reflect my life