Through my paintings I address my interest in how the language of painting operates and creates meaning. I employ a graphic, hard-edged style and a restrained color palette in my work, using simple, recognizable yet relatively neutral shapes without volume. From afar, the effect is flat and clean but closer examination reveals a surface that is not so much flat as it is filled in with visible brush marks and slight variations in color. The images function as signs in which the interaction of form and color produce visual relationships that seem to project specificity while remaining ambiguous enough to allow interpretation and inquiry.
An individual painting may reference the figure, still life, and modernist abstraction all at once without definitively belonging to any of these traditions. For example, the painting Ess Envy depicts a sinuous, flesh colored form against a dark ground that may be read variously as a reference to the body, an inverted still life, or as a mysterious abstract shape. The central positioning of the form, the crispness of its edges, and the use of high contrast colors contribute to the sense that this image has something to communicate, a question that is being asked of the viewer. Here, it is my intention to create an image that through its appearance conveys that it may easily be read or understood, even though it lacks a clear and definite referent.
My interest is in creating a visual language that operates on multiple levels. I am interested not only in developing a personal language through painting but also in the potential life of that language outside of myself. When selecting my work for exhibition, I focus on the formal qualities as well as the question that each one poses. While each work has its own possible answers, these can be manipulated further through curatorial choices. To this end I pair or group paintings, while others I install alone. My goal is to complicate or compound potential readings of each painting through the associations that may be created between it and other works. The result is an arrangement of paintings that evoke a language and appear to employ a system that might be mastered and understood, yet is always shifting just out of reach.