Artist Statement

Currently much of my artwork is about the influence of our memories and perceptions of the past on the realities of the present and the future. I am painting about how our perceptions, sometimes falsely remembered, of our past roles and behaviors effect our experience of our present lives and also our expectations of what we can accomplish in the future. These memories of our past effect who we perceive ourselves to be, what kind of personality we attribute to ourselves, and how others see us. I make use of boxes and spatially distorted rooms to represent the limitations we place on ourselves and others as a result of these distorted memories and perceptions. I take images from nature, drawings from life and photographs from my past, digitally combine and alter them, and use these new images as one aspect of the acrylic and oil paintings that I create.

Other themes in my work include: the “terror of the simple” and my personal search for a way to be open and authentic without being trampled by the noise and debris of life. I have concluded that many people are frightened of quietness which causes them to fill their lives with physical and emotional clutter to avoid dealing with important issues such as our own mortality and that of others in our lives. This is expressed in my work by the use of various symbols for choices we all make about which parts of ourselves to reveal to the world and how we allow social connections to affect us. I am continually building a vocabulary of abstracted and simplified images in my work as a response to this cluttered nature of modern life. These symbols help to build layers of meaning in my paintings as well as to lend a narrative quality to the work. My work is primarily in watercolor, acrylic or oil paint on canvas done in an abstracted manner and this style represents the prioritizing and simplification I am trying to achieve in my own life.

I like to think of my paintings as visual poems, which have specific meanings to me, but may be interpreted differently by various viewers.