Artist Statement

I am a painter who explores the physical world around me and the unseen realm of the psyche. My work draws on elements from life—figures, man-made structures, and natural landscapes—and elements from the imagination. Using vibrant colors, warped depictions of space, and apparitions of fantastical creatures, I create dream-like scapes that are explorations of the mind. They depict the liminal space where minds go when they wander away from the present moment, a space that lies just beyond observed reality. These dream worlds represent the escapism many seek, whether through the mindless distraction offered by technology and social media, the search for idealized visions of the world away from societal demands and expectations, or the nostalgic longing for child-like freedom. The elements of regular life depicted in my work ground the scenes in the physical world to set the two—the dream-like world and reality—in sharp contrast, serving as reminders of the restless yearning for distraction felt in the mundanity of everyday life. The corporality of the landscapes connects the human body to the depictions of psychological mindscapes. The spaces and backgrounds in my figurative work place the subject in a constructed landscape of the psyche. Employing thin layers of paint that build up atmospheric spaces and expressive strokes that boldly construct forms, I create visual rhythm within the works that highlights the intimate relationship between physical body and mind. In these figurative works, I paint from photographs taken on my phone, often with lens distortion. These depictions of a captured instant both instill the images with a sense of nostalgia for time gone by and make the works legible to those with a sense of digital literacy, bringing into focus one’s own, most likely frequent, technological escapism.