While I am making these paintings, I am between a state of dreaming and prayer. I reach a place where my unconscious mind and imagination are freed, so that I am able to create my own visual experience.  These paintings are primarily abstract, but often contain plantlike or somatic forms that maintain the feeling of a landscape.  These natural forms are easy to relate to and they set the stage for the intimate experience I want to create.  I saturate the painting with information so that one has to slow down to take it in.   I challenge the viewers’ perspectives on landscape and suggest a new and astonishing kind of beauty.  Viewers can wander around in these paintings, and be transported by the power of their imagination combined with mine.  I would like to convey something of the meditative experience I have while making them.  I want people to feel that they are part of a creative progression and that the universe and ultimately their own selves are full of profound beauty. 

In the spring of 2017, I had the opportunity to collaborate with Peabody alumnus and vocalist Carol Cannon and pianist Allison Tsai on a collaborative music and art performance.  I created paintings inspired by thirteen short vocal pieces composed by Erik Satie.  The paintings were shown during a recital for a live audience in April of 2017. 

My approach was to combine my meditative painting method with a method of musical inspiration.  I danced the paintings, letting my brush be influenced by the music and lyrical content of the songs. 

My artwork has always been based in my meditative practice, thoughts and readings in the area of my spiritual life and responsibility.
More specifically, my portraits are an exploration of identity and narrative, as well as personal value, through study of distinctive characteristics belonging to an individual.  I want to discover through portrait painting, avenues that lead me into a better understating of what identity means to both the people I am painting and myself.                      

I think that viewing ourselves as unique and of worth is critical to having a positive view of one’s own identity and that when we accept ourselves as unique and of value we are encouraged to consider other’s uniqueness and worth.  Creating art can be one gateway into seizing this sense of one’s value as a person, also called Basic Goodness.