artist statement

My work begins with the confusion, doubts, and dilemmas life throws at us. In combining and composing poses, expressions, backgrounds, and symbolic objects, I create oil paintings – psychological allegories that mirror these tangled feelings.

The paintings often look dreamlike because they speak to our inner worlds. The emotional and immaterial are easily dismissed as not quite 'real.’ I paint in a realistic style to push against that, and to ground the work with a certain earthly weight. For the same reason, I draw on techniques from traditional portrait painting. Every painted figure is rooted in a real person, yet my work isn’t about any one individual – each figure is a character in a story, standing in for all of us. 

Much of the raw material for these paintings — photos and videos — comes from staged shoots I do myself, supplemented with images sourced online. I then digitally weave together numerous elements, large and small, drawing from many different sources to build the templates I paint from. Only then does the actual painting begin.

Whether figurative or more landscape-based, my paintings are imagined spaces for wonder, pondering, and musing — offering perspectives on our confusing world.