I think of my work as a series of encounters between tactile materiality and illusion. My interest is in resolving this conflict through representation. What this means in the studio is using materials in such a way that they contribute to the internal logic of the representation but retain an external existence. I find there is frankness in tactility that becomes unreliable when it is activated as a thing in the painting. The painterly marks similarly alternate between creating illusionistic space and revealing the flatness of the picture plane. My subject matter is a result of finding places where this phenomenon may exist.