I start a painting by picking what the genre, or scene, is going to be. For example, an “orchard.” The scene is never a specific place, but is instead, like a movie set, always a generalization of a type of place. This prevents the narratives of the painting from being tied down to events that have transpired at a certain place and time, and gives me a blank slate on which to construct the narratives and to set the tone of my piece.

I then find the images to construct the scene’s background and the narratives taking place within it. I use Google Image search for this, as it allows me to use the images that are the most available, and therefore the most familiar and iconic to my audience. Only referencing images from a public source prevents my depictions from being lost in translation; the images available for me to use are not from my limited experiences but are from the experiences of the general population at large.