I paint real conversations with real people in real time. The spaces are not real spaces, rather they are reconstructed and reimagined from hastily made on-sight drawings and photographic references created during a conversation. The oil paint medium is stiffened in the freezer and the thin skins are mixed back into the paint for added texture. The immediacy of the cradled hardwood substrate further enhances the effect of the thickly textural and lush surface that is sensitive to the ways the materials touch, influence, and transform. My most recent images have been slowly transitioning from light-filled constructions to invented magical settings that recall the spatial poetry of generations of painters before me.

In each new work my dilemma is always the same: “How can I tell a story that is impossible to tell?” Even after researching a phenomenon that I’ve heard about or experienced, asking questions of and engaging with others who have more involvement or knowledge, even after a sitter is selected and a title for the conversation is chosen, I am never certain. Yet I return to these forms of figuration and the painted story again and again to gain a deeper understanding of my experiences with others. I am a positivist. I am inspired by the small hopes and individual actions of so many in my rural Adirondack community in response to injustice and to local and global issues. I think of each painting as a counterforce to the overwhelming sense of invisibility many communities feel when their narratives are told for or taken from them.