Artist Statement

I create paintings and mixed media works that range from pure abstraction to figuration and narrative. Working across media including oil, acrylic, collage, drawing, and carved surfaces, I choose materials according to the needs of the work rather than allegiance to any single medium.

The questions that continually draw me back to the studio concern memory, myth, spirituality, and the mysterious ways images emerge from the mind. I am fascinated by the space where intention meets accident and where meaning reveals itself rather than being imposed. Again and again, I return to the question of how abstract marks become symbols, stories, or emotional truths.

My process is essential to the meaning of the work. Decades of teaching art across disciplines have fostered a restless curiosity and a willingness to move between media and methods. I rarely begin with a fixed image or destination. Instead, I build, erase, layer, carve, and revise in conversation with the work itself. Sometimes figures and narratives emerge from abstraction. At other times, the painting resolves fully as an Abstract or Rootist composition, complete in its own visual language. I have learned not to force either outcome, but to follow where the work leads.

I hope viewers are drawn in first by color, texture, and composition, and rewarded on a second look with unexpected connections and meanings. Whether the work remains abstract or becomes narrative, I want it to leave room for wonder and ambiguity. If it succeeds, viewers encounter not simply my experience, but space for their own memories, stories, and questions to emerge.