Artist Statement

Everything leaves its mark. Moments. Memories. The way the light hits. A good day. There are things that cling to us. Lost things stay too, in their way. A face, once familiar, now flits in and out. A muddied silhouette, but no less important for its distortion. The things that shape us, in turn, change their shape over time, whether in a series of imperceptible movements or some seismic shift—as we age, when we hurt, when we love.

My work considers the uncertain areas of these changes, the relationship between stillness and progression. Using nostalgia as a vantage point, I paint both intuitively and from memory. The imagery I use serves as a conduit for the subject matter, which remains unseen: feelings of presence, absence, lingering, longing, a sense of ephemerality, and residual impression. In my most recent and ongoing body of work, Arrangements, flowers act as placeholders. While they represent people, places, and memories of significance to me, they also serve as a marker of passage, implying both celebration and mourning while signifying the idea of an eternal return through change.

In the end, I am seeking reconciliation between permanence and impermanence, searching for meaning along the boundary of recollection. Through these negotiations, moments of ambiguity emerge alongside those that seem almost like clarity. Working the surface of the paintings by excavating, layering, and wiping out is a kind of searching, one that is tied to the passing of time. Things become signified while being indistinct. They are obscured, altered, and retrieved — but not necessarily in that order.