ARTIST STATEMENT

As a painter, I am influenced by the tradition of narrative figuration and the intimate interiors of Vermeer, Bonnard, and Hopper.  In my work, color and light is used to convey a narrative psychologically and spiritually charged.  Architectural space serves as a formal and conceptual device to symbolize tension between the interior and exterior world. The figure is bound by space, emotionally distant and lost in thought or contemplation. Like a window on a window, the picture frame crops a moment of an unfolding private drama.    

 
The physical evidence of the painter’s journey, the mark or touch, is critical to my engagement with my work. Painting from observation, directly working from the figure framed by light and space is central to my practice as an artist. More than a desire to get “back to the basics” or to achieve greater technical mastery over the medium of oil painting, it comes from a deeper philosophical need. The power of illusionist painting is not that it tries to create a “now” reality but that it can mirror consciousness and embody the paradoxical truths of impermanence and, in the words of Paul Tillich, The Eternal Now.