I question the emotional and psychological framework our culture works within. In my work I examine the politics of fear and propagated ignorance and, in doing so, I hope to expose our value systems and bring attention to the absurd. My work asks that you press the “think button” and attempts to ratify the reasonable through the more commonly communicated crazy. I want the viewer to investigate truth for themselves, and in sharing my own investigation I hope together we might discover the benefits of truth in a world that overwhelms us with everything but.

I find it amusing how one’s art—whether it be painting, drawing, or mixed media—can seem to have greater depth and importance when you read a well-combed artist statement. I have always felt that the work must speak for itself. You either have a reaction to it or you don’t, and the dialogue you have with the piece is the only important thing once it leaves my studio. I work with colors and materials that when combined strike a emotional chord within me, which I hope translates to the viewer.

There are properties inherent to painting that dictate the ways in which the viewer is to perceive and engage with an image or object. I am currently interested in the tension between illusionistic space and the tangible physical space that painting inhabits. This is not simply an expansion of painting into three-dimensional space, but rather a reconciliation between the opticality of the picture plane and the nature of objective somatic experience.

I am investigating the psychological complexity of women through intimate observations in the bedroom. The work is inspired by the cult of beauty in contemporary mass media. Intricately painted, decorative interiors are invented to titillate the viewer.

Creation and destruction. We create structures and decorative objects only to have the elements of time and nature wear them down. The continuity of this erosion shows us that beauty is imperfect and impermanent. As in the ancient Japanese aesthetic of Wabi-sabi, I see beauty in the inevitable diminishment of form. In my Erosion Series I address the cyclical nature of life in an image or “area” that reveals a long history of creation and destruction. The series is about process—my interest is in material transformation.

I make works that combine conceptual rigor, light-hearted humor, and the beauty of a well-crafted object. Formally, I am interested in visual spatial dynamics. Today’s two-dimensional experience is more dynamic than ever, and this has influenced my paintings, which oscillate between abstract mapping and photographic representation. Abstraction and photographic representation are not placed in opposition to each other, but are related through actual, perceptual, and procedural connections.

Like the light from a deep-sea anglerfish, my work entices viewers to enter a world that is normally obscured by reason and fear. Death, childhood, and glitter are nostalgic devices meant to leave one giggling in the face of terror.

I start painting by donning a hazmat suit with a hood connected by hose to a fresh air supply, like an old bell diver. I lay the support flat and mix a two-part epoxy resin. After I add pigments to the resin mixture, I gradually heat it up before it solidifies. Although each painting is carefully planned, my best intentions are thwarted by the chaos created by the resin. Every painting is an alchemical experiment that cannot be reproduced, and yields many surprises, good and bad, when hung the next day.

I make paintings with soil gathered from places integral to my personal history. These paintings connect formally rigorous, nonrepresentational twentieth-century art with current concerns about our loss of respect for the natural world. Although everyone has seen soil before, most have not seen it in the way I present it: on the wall, defying gravity, extracted from its origin, aestheticized, honored. My work compels the viewer to reconsider something essential that is usually overlooked.