Telling stories is part of how we relate to one another. Shared stories help us create connections to our neighbors and our surroundings. What is more, storytelling—for better or worse—typically involves hyperbole. We tend to exaggerate; we tend to lie.

About two years ago, I developed a strong interest in Theseus’s paradox. My curiosity was originally spurred by my uncle’s hobby of car restoration: I was fascinated by the idea that a metal structure could enter his shop and be completely disassembled and then reassembled with brand-new parts, all the while retaining the same identity. Everything that originally existed in that car was gone, but the gradual process of change allowed its character to remain.

To create a visual/conceptual backdrop for my paintings, I employ strategies derived from post-painterly and gestural abstraction, hard-edge painting, impressionism, and atmospheric perspective. The synthesis of these painting dialects gives each piece both object-presence and a dynamic spatial interior. There is constancy and interdependency in the “dynamic” gray-scale interiors and the often tri-color “static” borders, which, framelike and hard-edged, wrap around the painting.