Through paint, I explore my friends and family in quiet, introspective moments. These compositions reveal a vulnerable side of the human experience that is only unveiled when people are not performing or fulfilling societal roles. I am interested in the inner person as well as what they project outward. Using richly painted surfaces with mesmerizing patterns and lush vegetation, I captivates the viewer to encourage curiosity and self-reflection.

These are carefully executed oil paintings of people meaningful to me in their environments. In these intimate works, I am interested in pattern, light, and color.  Additionally, I contemplate the sensitive connection between my experience and their inner world. 

This body of work was started in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and continues each spring and summer. I focus on intimate depictions of flowering plants. These plants are mostly perennials, all feeding bees and butterflies. Watching the garden grow and the blooms come and go allows me to have a deeper connection to nature. Observing the living things around me is a meaningful meditation and reminder that time continues. These are small oil on panel paintings. I use a colored ground such as a bright red or green. Because I paint these in one sitting, the oil paint is slick on the panels and the under color shows through. 

This body of work was started in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and continues each spring and summer. I focus on intimate depictions of flowering plants. These plants are mostly perennials, all feeding bees and butterflies. In addition to these small oil on panel paintings, I observed the vegetable garden through larger, sustained works on linen. Watching the garden as it grow and the blooms come and go allows me to have a deeper connection to nature in both my perception and presence.

This body of work was started in response to the Covid-19 pandemic and continues each spring and summer. I look around me and focus on small, hopeful things, like tomato plants and sunflowers started from seed for the gardens. Watching them grow is thrilling. Painting them allowed me to slow down and capture special moments often over looked. Some plants seemed to have figurative qualities. Continuing to observe the living things around me is a meaningful meditation and reminder that time continues. 

Printmaking has always been comforting to me because of its heavy reliance on process. By recently exploring monotype printing, I can combine the immediacy of plein air painting with that procedural process. Racing the etching ink drying on my plexiglass plate, I find the level of heightened presence creating the monotype image similar to my experience painting plants in my garden. Using the small plant paintings created over the summer as a jumping off point, I have since started to explore different imagery such as my many sassy cats. Printing the image is a one-off; it could fail or succeed. Peeling the paper off the plexi plate is an exciting moment of anticipation. With a second run through the printing press, a ghost print is made. These I work into further with watercolor pushing color and light.

These paintings explore an opposing situation: contemporary people and objects and a limited palette and composition. The human figure is a fascinating subject and I continue to explore it because of the potential for self-reflection and individual response of the viewer. The limited palette only contains titanium white, yellow ochre, indian red, and ivory black to achieve every hue and value seen. By reducing the palette, decisions are reduced to warm or cool and light or dark.

These figurative oil paintings were completed with the intention of creating suggestive narratives.  Color, shapes, and composition are explored alongside the psychological state of the figures. The positions of the objects and people selected are intentional and serve to move viewers to imagine their meaning.