I paint about perceptions of existence, or in simpler terms, I paint about “not knowing”. When

I consider the world, with all its poverty, injustice and evil, I both dwell in this utter

brokenness that defines our reality and at the same time stretch and yearn for a greater

reality, while acknowledging our human limits to what we can know, the end of thought. In

my work I combine fragments of figurative elements and abstract renderings to create stories

that seek to address the tension of this situation. I believe we live in a world in which we

blissfully devour our natural resources for fleeting comfort, while media bombards us with so

much useless content that our senses become duller still. I seek in my work to scrape back

this surface level of our current existence to discover both those places of immanence and

transcendence. Through painting, I seek to slow down and make visible this ambiguous,

mysterious, and invisible meaning, and to discover, see, and experience it. Story has always

been used throughout our history on this planet to explain our mystery. It is a human

response to not knowing, and it is a beautiful response, whether poignant or absurd, full of

wonder or humor. Thus, duality and paradox are tools I use in my work, in attempts to poke

holes in the polarizing aspects of religious and cultural constructs of truth found today in

church and politics. Artistic influences include medieval icon paintings, the brutal narratives

of Leon Golub that explore man’s inhumanity, and also the empathetic pursuits of spirituality

in the paintings of Sandro Chia, Marc Chagall and the Pacific Northwest Mystic painters.