Artist Statement

I received my first easel at four years old. My father built it from scratch, and the encouragement that came with it set a direction I have never really left.

What I am chasing, work after work, is the space between realism and abstraction — enough form to recognize, enough left open for the viewer’s eye to wander and interpret freely. That is the sweet spot I keep returning to, whatever the subject in front of me.

Most of the work is acrylic and ink, and much of it lives on Yupo. Yupo’s slick, non-absorbent surface will not let paint set the way canvas does: ink pools, drifts, and lifts back off. It refuses to hold still, and that refusal is the point — it keeps me responding to the material instead of executing a plan I made before I began. When a piece calls for more control, I move to canvas or panel.

The work moves across three bodies — abstracts, portraits of people and of pets, and the long-running Mask Project. They look unlike one another, but they are the same question approached from different angles: how much can be suggested rather than stated, and how much room does that leave for someone else’s interpretation?

A painting that answers everything is finished before the viewer arrives. I would rather hand over something still open.