Artist’s Statement

My work is driven by my own personal visual stimulus.  I pay homage to the things I love and draw me in every day.  I feel the work is successful when I can capture emotion and humor in recognizable images that have been altered just enough to challenge what you are looking at.  I have always been a colorist and this strength supports all of my work. Through the use of stylized figures, objects, iconic symbols, fashion, furniture and language I look for a moment, a gesture, a place, and use my creative impulse to interpret and recreate it.  The interpretive images employed provide the viewer with easy access into the painting.  I am currently expanding my work into several collections that include sculpture and installations in unison with painting.    

I incorporate a base idea with interchanging subjects and allow the story to evolve.  One example is my “Cocktail Party Series”.  In this series, I intentionally left the heads off the figures – cropping the view to draw the viewer in as voyeur and participant.  There is a familiarity to the situation – a cluster of women laughing and holding glasses of champagne or wine and sharing a scandal or a secret.  The work is not literal, but the message is, and the body language along with the balance of the gestures and composition are all important to telling the full story and creating the exchange within the painting.  I am constantly looking at the shapes, positive and negative, and the in-and-out movement of the composition, along with the color, in order to allow the viewer to share the moment.  I have a keen eye for fashion and trends and incorporate these elements in my paintings to keep it current, accessible and new.

Recently, I have been using language as an abstract entrance into the painting.  I love patterns, including color and stripes, for the strength they give the painting. Language gives me this same strength and the movement which allows me in a very natural way to go places I have not gone before.  Along with the text I have incorporated elements of collage along with the iconic images of my own personal work.  I have always used collage in various ways and my recent work shows a new vision and purpose for using it and has connect my worlds together for me.  Through this process I have found an original voice accessing me to landscapes and larger scaled works in a very natural and exciting way.  I have traveled through many ways of telling my artistic stories and currently feel I have found the rhythm and clarity for my vision and style. The energy within my new series of “Roses” and “Landscapes” is taking me on a very exciting journey.