My training as a sculptor leads me toward large, industrial shapes, big canvases, and layers of texture. I am fascinated with how texture conceals and reveals, how it asks you to come closer, to touch it, to interact. Often I work in a series, painting on several pieces at a time. I carry a painting around in my mind for days before I lay down a wash, sketch out a plan with charcoal or graphite, and block out the colors. Then I relax my self-imposed boundaries and give the painting its chance to speak. Have I missed something? It's s a delicate walk, directing the paint towards the idea in my mind vs. the organic creative process. Painting is a personal process of discovery that I use to communicate everyday events. Which combination of texture, color, and composition defines the journey between co-joined realities such as hope and depression, or anger and love?

Im compelled to explore the meaning of colors. If I put aside past conditioning, what do I really feel with red? Maybe it's not anger at all. The amount of a color, their relationship to each other-all of this moves me toward the specific environment or feeling in a painting. I use paint to dialogue with my viewer and myself. Is this gray area a true description of what I'm feeling? Does this red bring me closer to understanding my own mind, in this moment? Because of my previous work with three-dimensional forms, my sense of depth and dimension seem to show up in my paintings.

Acrylic paint is fluid and takes well to my aggressive strokes and the pure colors I need to communicate my voice. There's immediacy to acrylics that bypasses my impatience with long drying times so I can apply the next layer as soon as possible.

My intention when painting is to convey the many emotions we all feel as human beings. There are so many levels of love, of loss, of joy, of pain, yet we limit our experience of the full range of feelings inside of us; and in doing so, limit our humanity. Even as I paint, I sense the undercurrent of my own experience spilling onto the canvas, a fleeting, shadow moment that eludes me too and only when i see the finished painting do I sometimes understand what I am not willing to otherwise look at.

Artist Highlights

• ArtWanted.com Gallery:    Fine Art