statement

My paintings explore the tension between abstraction, representation, and reality. I am interested in mystery and suggestion, the intersection between readability and unreadability. I’m searching for the moment of perplexity in a representation, the point at which the viewer must choose the content of the work. It is like that moment in the night when the shadow of a chair could be someone, the halfperceived.

This is because the viewer’s freedom is paramount. I’m not interested in making a work with one interpretation. Freedom is the ability to choose. The more perplexing something is, the more it circulates through the viewer’s mind, the more opportunities they have to choose the content of the work, so I’m trying to slow the viewing experience.

This has led me to pursue work that presents contradictory information about space and figure, because those contradictions offer the viewer a question, not a statement. As a result, I pursue suggestions of optical and spatial illusions to invite questions of how elements relate to one another, and I incorporate collage elements to expand those questions into the viewer’s space. Figures and locations offer the potential for narrative, so they must dissolve into suggestions that widen these possibilities. The viewer completes the painting.