Artist’s Statement, August 10, 1998

I am interested in the dialogue between the inner and the outer,
between the seen and the felt, and how this dialogue transpires in paint,
in plastic form. I am interested in tensions that occur between various
aspects of the situation, between the visual and the tactile, between body and space,
between form and light, between movement and stillness, and the way these tensions
can lead to a wholeness. I am interested in painting as a means of exploring
various ways of relating to the world in which I find myself.

Artist’s Statement, July 15, 2001

What is the nature of desire? How does it function in vision?
What is the nature of presence? Of absence?
What is this unexpected presence found in the seeming absence?
What does it mean, this experience of sitting in a room and watching the light enter, filling the space?
Falling on an empty chair, falling on a woman's body.
The nature of light as caressing, as enlightening and revealing form.
The nature of light as overbright, as glaring and breaking down form.

While working from observation, while interrogating the objective world,
I am interested in giving room and invitation to the range of my changing subjectivity,
and watching how the variety of responses affect the dialogue formally,
creating various means of translation, of markmaking and plastic involvement.

Artist’s Statement, June 29, 2005

My paintings are usually done in suites, ranging from five or six paintings to sometimes
over a dozen in each suite. Each set of works focuses on a particular situation of an
interior with slight shifts in the positioning of the furniture, triggering subtle shifts in my
perception of the relationships between them. Each suite also shares a particular palette,
a particular set of colors and tonal relationships specific to that interior during a season
with its own specific light. Aside from some works being larger and some smaller, the
approach may also vary from painting to painting. One work may focus on the
architecture of the furniture and the marking may be more closely resolved and tighter.
Another work may have its emphasis more on the spaces between the physical objects
and the marking may be more open, broader and more painterly. There is a range that I
am interested in exploring with each situation. Some compositions take in the larger
situation of the whole room while others work more as a close up on a specific area,
coming in to focus. In addition to the bare interiors, within each suite I usually paint one
or two paintings which include a figure as means of heightening the sense of presence
and absence. Further, interspersed with the paintings is an ongoing series of drawings,
both in pencil and charcoal. The drawings are not preparations for the paintings as such,
but rather work to develop a relationship with the various spaces and furnishings. They
allow a kind of intimacy to develop with what may lie within these places. The drawings
also vary in approach from a more delicate hand to a more forceful and aggressive mark.

Artist’s Statement, January 28, 2008

My painting occurs in relation to presence - the presence in a room, in between things,
in open space, in light. It is this quality of presence, always available within the phenomenal world,
which my work investigates. I am interested in how this sense of presence shifts
and adjusts as our experience of the world changes, in a daily way, from hour to hour
and moment to moment; an ontological inquiry within a dialectic of the objective and subjective.
How does the attempt at the representation of presence and the accompanying form change as our apprehension
of presence changes? How does a painting language shift to accommodate those aspects of our
changing subjectivity? Additionally, there is the parallel and interrelated problem of the work achieving and embodying
its own presence, not merely as a reflection, but as an extension, adding to the fabric of the world.
To the extent that this is achieved, the work may perform reflexively, focusing our attention back
to the phenomenal world, in a state of inquiry and attention.

While painting I am in a three-way dialogue, between the piece of the world
that I am observing, my inner subjective response, and the accretion of marks and formal needs
of the painting. I am exploring the world in front of me, a still life, flowers, an empty room
with a few chairs, perhaps a person sitting. As I continue this investigation I find that
there are different modes of transaction and translation, different modes of painting language
that conjure up differing experiences of presence. When these different modalities are
juxtaposed, as for example, distinct canvases within a triptych, they create a synergy of presence
that I find not available by any one of them alone.

Although the resultant appearance of the work may be seen as a postmodern
investigation of the juxtaposition of different painting styles my interest lies more directly
in the investigation and apprehension of a pre-conceptual sense of presence --
more phenomenological than post-structural.

I believe it is through the identification of the self with a pre-conceptual
and pre-linguistic sense of being that actual change occurs. While our identification remains
within the confines of discursive thought and language our model of the world remains
one of fragmentation and conflict. Language isn't to blame - it's just the way it works.
Actual change occurs through a shift in our identification of the self and the growing awareness
of the essential and indivisible fabric of reality. It is to an investigation of this sheer presence,
which is not only pre-conceptual but also resides before and between form,
that my work is committed.