Artist Statement

“Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.” – Paul Klee

People perceive their lives and the situations in them differently, we may have similar experiences but the way they are viewed and the associations and emotions connected with them are individual to each person. The animated, abstract forms and figures that I create energize and bring my paintings to life. I invent different situations and imagery through the discovery of everyday life, by this I am referring to the associations you make each day; the people you meet, the places you go, the things you see or reference, all of this has the potential to be transformed and distorted into a new and exciting reality.

Sometimes imagery stems not only from my memories or experiences but from things I see at a particular moment, such as, an idea that is sparked from a mark of gesture or a form that has been placed on a canvas. I confuse and simplify these happenings through a peculiar process until they become an entity all of their own, abandoning their original identities and gaining a new individual look and spirit. I use a wide variety of color, borders and outlines allowing the shapes themselves an individual and lively personality that I feel is more fully experienced when dealt with in this way.

My paintings often have a whimsical atmosphere that is mixed with a degree of childlike enthusiasm. The ideas and images found in my work are far from reality yet at times seem as though they could exist. In fact they do exist, in my imagination and in their own reality, a reality that harbors a balance between extreme abstraction and the realistically unreal.

The mind is an abstract tool; it can be expanded and explored in many ways. It can be used to find logic and reason in things or it can be used to daydream, to wonder what could be. The imagination has the ability to see things in a way that the eyes are not able to.   In my work there is no combination of things that cannot be placed together; my imagination is able to be released, to become a reality on the canvas.