The distortion of time in natural history collections, the assemblage of materials and objects,  the further physical abstraction and distortion  from being put under glass, preserved in a moment- all these ideas inform my work. These ideas and situations seem  a perfect statement of our attempts to hold what we cannot. The process of painting with its studio ritual and ending  visual result is, for me, the perfect form to address this impossible abstraction of experienced time. 

​     Process driven and coming from a place of making lists upon lists of images, sentiments, and ideas, my paintings evolve through a process of painting images in and out and a constant reordering of elements until a reconciliation of visual/intellectual content is there. My work speaks to a highly personal temporality and language of disparate yet related imagery. The paintings should be apprehended all at once with a direct visual and emotional impact that conveys an idea or meaning without a linear narrative. This  temporality is the type that one may feel after reading a dense literary passage laden with imagery, only without the prosaic visual and figurative descriptions. Left are the associations with the seams between emotion and thought, thought and word, and word and page, blurred together. This becomes the space and subject of the paintings.  The areas between the layers at once spread out and flatten. I am very interested in articulating this way of understanding and unlocking varied meanings. 
   Initially, working through the conceptual lens of the Still Life of the Dutch Golden Age, where species from different continents  meet on the same plane and blooms bloom together out of season and time flattens, my work references multifarious art historical sources and time becomes fluid with abstract and figurative references coexisting. In the most recent work, my symbolic focus has been on our avian friends both wild and domestic

   Birds are a mystery to me. They are not easily anthropomorphized into lovable, cuddly, furry mammals with their beady eyes, scaly feet and claws. Their bodies evolved  adapting to specific environments including their camouflage feathers blending with the flora surrounding them, hence the macaw's incredible colors of the rainbow. Birds are small messengers of life that have given us extensive poetic metaphors. I became very content with the symbolic mystery of a flying messenger in these paintings, yet one that is grounded in a figurative tradition. Birds, native and exotic, coexist in my canvases.