Artist Statement
I am a reader of fiction. I’m drawn to exquisite prose. I pay attention to texts (prose, poetry, song lyrics) that are evocative of our inner world — the one we rarely share with others. They address the introspection we all engage in when we are reminiscing, judging, calculating, decoding, or merely trying to make sense of the world we live in. I copy the words into notebooks and they become references and titles for my artwork.
Two examples are: “my youth has gone subterranean as a dream” (from a memoir by Joyce Carol Oates), and “It’s easier to look back on a pain than to see one coming." (from the Emily Dickinson poem “While I Was Fearing It, It Came”). Each of these quotes address a unique aspect of memory. They give an interpretation to something (a memory) that is oiften vague, or unstable, or in constant modification. To reminisce about one’s youth, or to remember the fear of an approaching painful experience that has long passed, both of these are relegated to that inner dialogue we all have with ourselves. Like those texts, my paintings attempt to open a portal into the viewer’s examination of their own delicate and private musings.