Artist Statement

I draw my subjects from my experience and memory. Some are figures in motion — physically, psychically, and spiritually. Evoking liminality, they emerge at thresholds, boundaries, or margins. Others are visions of interior spaces: I shift focus, eliminating the boundary of the human form, to explore layers of reality. Although the subjects are illusions on a surface, they are grounded in the materiality of the medium and evidence of process and invite sustained attention and contemplation.

Using palette knives, my fingers — and, occasionally, brushes — and mixed media that includes oil paint, oil stick, wax, graphite and solvent, I build up the body of the painting by spraying, pouring, dripping, scraping, and sanding until the skin is thick and rich, both opaque and transparent, sometimes obscuring or protecting the body underneath and other times revealing layers of growth. I alternate between building and excavating, inscribing lines and then filling them in, until the work has acquired a patina of time, depth, and presence.