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 conversations that I have with my neighbors with the aim of giving them the opportunity to restate their perceptions of contemporary issues and injustice, and to see themselves in art. My work is a counterforce to the overwhelming sense of invisibility individuals in rural communities feel when their narratives are told for them.

After researching a phenomenon I’ve heard about or experienced, asking questions of and engaging with others who have more involvement or knowledge, I begin working in my sitter’s with photographic references and hastily made line-drawings. As our conversations continue to develop and I become fully invested in their voice, I begin to think about their experience as a kind of spatial poetry that I continue to explore in my studio.

My studio practice is grounded in process. I make oil paintings that are sensitive to the ways the materials touch, influence and transform as I work, and though I am interested in the physical and metaphorical qualities of light, my more recent paintings have slowly transitioned from light-filled constructions to invented magical settings. As I become fully absorbed in the alchemy of mixing, scraping, and freezing the oozing oil paint, my mind is quieted, and I 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.