I am an interloper and I am inspired by living among an Adirondack people whose small hopes and individual actions lead to solutions. I paint real conversations with real people in real time with the aim of exposing the numbing impact of global issues and injustice.

Beginning each new work can be an overwhelming experience. After researching a phenomenon I’ve read or heard about, asking questions of and engaging with others who have knowledge or experience, continuing with thumbnail sketches, photographic references, and detailed line-drawings, the subjects in these paintings and I are fully invested in a particular conversation.

Painting, then, becomes my playground of further exploration, and of form, color, and texture, and though I am interested in the physical and metaphorical qualities of light, my more recent paintings have slowly transitioned from light-filled interior spaces to inventive chromatic settings. As I become fully absorbed in the alchemy of mixing, scraping, and freezing the oozing oil paint, my mind is quieted, and I can think more fully about each topic and my experiences with the sitter. I am ever interested in the hypnotic attraction of forms of figuration that have historically spoken quietly to the viewer, and return to the figure again and again in response to the humanity that exists all around me.