I paint ordinary, familiar objects and scenes, such as a window, a shirt, a subway seat, or a shadow. Painted out of context and within closely cropped compositions, these images become strange and empty, embodying the presence of absence. Painting talks to me of the tension between desire and loss, possession and longing. This binary dynamic is reflected in the process of painting, in the shift that occurs between my being fully immersed and absorbed in making, and then being removed through the act of looking when I step back and put down the brush.