I enjoy looking for the abstract qualities in everyday visual experience. I like the challenge of translating the three dimensional world into flat, two dimensional shapes of color, and searching for the design possibilities in the relating of those shapes through exaggeration, simplification, and invention.
I use studies and sketches from direct observation, photos, and memories as starting off points to creating a painting. Oftentimes I will start by making marks with no definite end in mind and letting the image emerge on its own, the painting itself suggesting what direction it will go in. This way of working leaves the door open for happy accidents as well as new ideas that may have never been conceived of if left to the conscious mind.
Oil paint is my preferred medium, as it affords a wide range of qualities, from opacity to transparency, richness of color, and textural variation. I prefer to apply the paint quite thickly in most cases, as this gives the paint a life of its own; the image becomes a marriage of the formal design and the physicality of the medium.
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