A Little About Me

I make portraits of both imaginary and real people. I make abstracts of texture and emotion. I use mostly oils, colored pencils, and graphite.

 

I make portraits because I find beauty and chaos in faces. I love expressing troubled expressions, seeking quiet and seeing secret emotions instead. I make abstracts because in the absence of faces and people and the hubris of this world, I want people to be absorbed into my paint. I bleed out emotions through my fingers into the canvas and paper.

 

My process for a single, successful piece starts in a dream or in a fragment of a thought. For example, my piece, “Fog on the Mississippi” was born driving through Audubon Park parallel to the Mississippi River. I was having a stressful day, and when I looked out the window, my breath caught in my throat and I knew I needed to express that moment. It was eerie, quiet, and thick. The painting took nearly two years to complete – I had to let it “simmer” for a year in between. My painting, “Overcoming Adversity”, was created from my anger and overwhelming nerve of the current political climate and was finished in five days.