artist statement
My new paintings explore the terrain of vulnerable, undefended experience in relationships, be they interpersonal, interspecies or with the work itself. Whether I’m working on a narrative or an abstract piece, I’m interested in revealing the unconscious, where the truths of one's feelings and desires are considered. As my knowledge deepens through the painting, I learn and transform judgement into compassion, fear of difference—or scarcity—into relationship.
My goal is to meet the surface purely in and of the moment. Building each narrative upon intuitive and impulsive mark-making, I use formal techniques to develop a storyline. Composing transparent, overlapping forms with divergent harmonies in texture, light and shadow, I work to express this cusp of being, the pure experience that is pre-thought and pre-judgement, dreamlike and free.
I’m equally interested in the boundaries at which discomfort or reaction arise. I’ll often juxtapose opposites to explore these edges in my abstract pieces. I’ll pair round shapes with angular ones, native with artificial, and place hard edges across soft blurred lines. Or I’ll combine chromatic color with absolute graise.
My intent is to invite the viewer into a multi-layered state of absorption that is awake and engaged.
