Artist Statement
Art is innately human, a byproduct of one’s experience, left standing alone in a field for another to adopt. It thrives when it connects and it is at its best when it forms an extraordinary relationship with the viewer. I see my work as if it were in the middle of a conversation and ready for candid dialogue. It’s prepared for a connection. I use abstraction to translate personal narratives into a universal language. And by varying my materials and marks, I allow for the opportunity of an inclusive conversation. Brushstrokes and lines become words that build and interact to form sentences. Large fields of color are over-arching ideas, but sometimes are needed to pacify and conceal. Glitter and cigarette butts are like conversation’s accessories, coy and flirtatious in their own way. The work may be the fossilized remains of my memory of a pigeon on Lexington Avenue, but through the general course of translation and internal dialogue, becomes an open space, ready for the viewer to add their own response. My phlegmatic reaction to otherwise inconsequential, though sincere, concentration on triviality becomes a new communication.

My three-dimensional work allows me to continue the conversation with more animation and sensuality.  They promote my inclination to touch and manipulate things, to build forms and shapes, to physically and directly interact with the world around me. My spoils from a shopping spree in the 11th Avenue 99 cent store become the punctuation in my ongoing dialogue. Plastic bouquets of flowers, hair extensions, and recycled paper home insulation become a physical manifestation of a story—a story that really has no beginning or end, or really any climax. I like to lose control of the narrative and in the negotiation of material, the resonance of entropy and feeling, something is born that was never planned. I am telling a story in a condensed form, anticipating a viewer who will dive in, take what’s needed, and continue the tale in his or her own voice.