Statement

I make oil paintings that celebrate the quiet conversations between color and ordinary things. I work from observation. Each composition is a moment of discovery—playful linkages and visual riddles that emerge as objects echo, mirror, or nudge one another across the picture plane. My work explores the tension between flatness and fullness.  I often crop setups, pushing motifs against the edge to keep the image charged. I do not always know what a painting will reveal; much of the work is deciphering what unfolds in front of me as I paint. That improvisatory dialogue—between the objects, the palette, and myself is what I find compelling. To look closely and observe, especially these objects which I feel I know so intimately, brings me a more present way of being. I invite viewers to slow down and trace layered relationships within familiar things: how a color can make an object speak, how scale and edge can shift meaning, and how everyday forms can hold quiet, unexpected joy. My paintings are an invitation to notice, to decode, and to take delight in color’s conversational power.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Art critic John Berger, “Selected Essays,” 1954

If you have never painted, you cannot fully appreciate what lies behind Matisse’s mastery of pure color. It is comparatively easy to achieve a certain unity in a picture either by allowing one color to dominate or by muting all the colors. Matisse did neither. He clashed his colors together like cymbals, and the effect is like a lullaby.