As a painter I try to speak plainly, though not necessarily autobiographically, about my encounters with the things most intimate to me. I attempt to depict how the simplicity of things touching, both literally and figuratively, belies a complex and deeply felt yearning to connect to and understand the exterior world and its constellation of inscrutable objects and principles. Arrays of hands and bodies, limbs and stalks, contorted in expressive but unintelligible ways, enact on a personal scale the herculean effort we exert—physically, existentially, emotionally— to mediate and communicate our own desires and selves in the face of such a world. And often, ever drawn toward all things that simultaneously elicit my deepest affection while remaining at the perimeter of my grasp and comprehension, I elect to paint portraits of cats, flowers, artfully decorated fingernails. My tendency toward narrative permits these indulgences, cherishing those minor, quotidian things that nonetheless channel our most utterly sentimental and complex energies.