My paintings are a re-imagined portrayal of living in contemporary southern suburbia. They are intuitive responses to everyday surroundings that are transformed into unfamiliar and fictional situations. The image emerges through a process of erasure, mending, and embellishment of paint and collage. The use of collage as a preconceived “mark” forces the image and materials to interact with one another. Raised in a house in which the interior was a monochromatic brown, I now indulge in ebullient color. An inclination to fantasize and exaggerate the ordinary offers me a way to reshape what I see, think, and feel into something tangible.