Windows

The window paintings examine identity. A windowpane functions as a site of transition. A reflection in a window is two places at once: the inside world and the outside world, compressed together on one plane. In the window paintings, both interior and exterior are self-constructed, self-defining worlds. Figures are in a liminal space: in both and neither. The window is both an opening and a barrier. The paintings depict disconnection, but also interconnection.

Security

The "Security" series documents surveillance camera images lifted from the web. Boundaries between personal and private are eroding. This series examines the public availability of personal images, how those images are translated by viewers, and how the internet functions on the boundary between public and private.

In the absence of adequate information, the viewer fabricates information. By painting security camera images, I am assigning significance to situations from which I am completely disconnected. Through painting I create narratives about my subjects without their knowledge or permission, and I encourage viewers to do the same.

Image appropriation has been used to critique creativity, originality and authenticity. In the "Security" series, I appropriate images, but I exhibit paintings of images instead of the photographic images themselves. In part, I do this in order to emphasize that recasting an image as "artwork" is the beginning of a process of interpretation. Both painting and viewing become forms of image manipulation.

Figures

The figurative paintings are narratives about psychological spaces. I am interested in disconnects between shared reality and individual interpretation, and the difficulty of defining fact. Because each person's reality is constructed from his or her specific experiences, no two people can have the same reality. We interact, but we are essentially disconnected. We are in the same physical space, but we each live in our own psychological space.

Not figures

I am working with transparency and opacity, solidity, ethereality, and reflection.

Sketchbook pages

Although the use of photography has become increasingly important to my painting, I have stopped traveling with a camera, and only travel with a sketchbook. My sketchbooks are surrogate photo albums, journals, and an ongoing self-documentation project.