Artist Statement

My artwork is about connection and relationships.

I paint the places where things meet: light touching water, a lily pad holding its place on a still lake, the edge of a galaxy where nothing becomes something. Those meetings are the subject. The paint is only how I get to them.

My work represents my beliefs, values and hopes for humanity. I believe we are not separate from what we look at. The same water that gathers in a marsh gathers in us; the same light that burns in a distant nebula falls on our faces. I keep returning to that kinship because it is the most honest thing I know — and because living by it would change how we treat one another and the ground beneath our feet.

My art speaks to the soul, beckoning us to see the relationship we have with each other, the environment around us and the spirit within. The cosmos in these paintings is not decoration. It is a way of talking about scale: how small our grievances are, and how large our responsibility. The lakes and lily pads are the same conversation at closer range — quiet, local, and no less holy.

Beauty and hope, mythology, storytelling, metaphor and symbolism — meant to act as a bridge to unite, invite and engage visual conversation.

A painting that stays beautiful while carrying grief is doing work. It keeps a door open. It lets a stranger sit beside you and look at the same thing until the two of you are no longer strangers.

So I don't make pictures to be admired. I make them to be talked about. I want one of these pieces to start a question in a room — and I want someone to live with it long enough to see something new in it, then tell me what it was.