I paint to try to make sense of this life and the world in which we live. This journey usually begins in familiar places from my childhood—rural landscapes and abandoned structures of the Carolinas. Combining a love of oil paint and art history, I’m interested in both creating and exploring psychological spaces, where mind and matter coalesce. I depict these icons of the American South not to monumentalize, but rather to question our histories and identities embedded and reflected within them. Nostalgia, violence, loss, love, guilt, fragility, shame, and complicity coexist.