Artist Statement

I am a dreamer who often fantasizes about how the world around me could be more vibrant, rich, and entertaining. I use paint to explore layered psychological states by staging specific scenarios derived from visions that have flashed through my mind. My visions are particularly saturated with notions of the ideal, as presented in fairytales, fashion and architecture.

A popular philosophy in modern cognitive psychology states that the feelings we experience in life are a direct result of a complex chain of flash thoughts. During times of panic, fear, and excitement neurotransmitters fire so quickly that emotions become complex, confusing, and heightened. It can be challenging to distinguish between rational and irrational thoughts. I am fascinated by this melding of conscious reality and nightmarish or fantastic imaginings.

My overwhelming need to manipulate the real manifests itself in my artistic process. I paint the relics of my fantasies. My work is informed by elaborate theatrical costumes and scenery. I use the panel as a way to flatten complex melodramas into single, scenarios that can be analyzed and interpreted. The montage-like compositions, energetic rhythms and dream logic in my work calls to mind popular music videos.

My process involves working from photographs of live models, often including myself, natural or staged environments, and physical abstract sculptures. These sculptures are born out of the actual scraps of my life, including fabric, lace, brightly colored string, styrofoam, furniture, and tangled bits of broken accessories. I occasionally integrate my sculptural materials into my paintings, amplifying the notion of uncertainty and illusion. The formal elements and techniques that I employ are directed by the same impetus as the subject matter. My tendency to ruminate materializes in painstaking depictions of textures, patterns, miniature designs, and fastidious detail, all of which are executed with tiny paintbrushes. In contrast, my desire to revel in pleasurable and emotive fantasy causes me to focus on more liberal techniques--thick strokes with larger brushes. This creates tension within my work that is intensified by a desire for closure that this dichotomy renders impossible.

The result of my process is a space more ornate and more beautiful than that which I inhabit; it is at once the stage for the fantastical expectations of my life and the contemplative space for understanding the disparity between the real and its relation to the imagined.