I think of my paintings as each comprising a small, often curious mythology, which addresses a shared understanding of loss and longing in the contemporary world, while at the same time revealing a fascination with the magical and poetic. I am interested in creating a sense of having revealed what was always already there, through images that seem simultaneously familiar and somehow strange or out of place.

My work consistently has a strong sense of implied narrative, a sense of time and space, and the use of overlooked, everyday objects that function as stand-ins for or the remains of a human presence. My strategy has most frequently been to start by creating an objective, literal space, and then to populate it with imagery that undermines this sense of objectivity.  I am interested in the way that ordinary objects, when juxtaposed with one another or placed in novel contexts, can take on a meaning that is somehow greater than the sum of the parts, that creates a visual poetry that transcends the everydayness from which it arises.

I begin every painting with an image, idea, or theme in mind, convinced that this image is central to what I am trying to convey.  But once I have started, I inevitably lose sight of the original, generative moment or plan in a miasma of fresh ideas, and begin a process of revisualization and discovery.  I paint images in, I paint images out, I change the colors and composition.  In moments that are alternately intuitive and deliberate I search for the story I want to tell and how to tell it. My paintings are the end product of a search.  It is more the making of the painting, than the end result, that is truly powerful for me.  I select imagery and have a sense of the tone or theme of each painting from the outset.  But it is through the process of searching for the right images, colors, textures, and composition that I am able to discover meaning and invest my paintings with it.

Although my paintings naturally reflect my life, they are not strictly illustrations of my experiences, but rather they contain metaphors and allegories for my understanding of the world around me.  In this respect you are invited to interpret the signs in order to create your own understanding, to decide or discover for yourself whether these are moments within a story about leaving or returning, loss or recovery, connection or disconnection, the past or the present, remembering or forgetting.