2009

Since the late 1990s, my work has encompassed painting, photography, and digital media. In recent years, it has focused on an exploration of states of limbo, of purgatory, of unconsciousness - states suspended between or beyond absolutes.

My paintings (usually large-scale and frequently based on digitally altered photography) create windows into dark spaces where bodies emerge from and recede into shadows - frail, ghostlike, vulnerable. Suspended in darkness, their states and the emotions they evoke are ambiguous - they can be seen as floating weightlessly or sinking into blackness, as dreamlike or nightmarish.

Another influence in my work is the theme of psychoactive pharmaceuticals and drugs. Their effects, too, can be seen as ambiguous, as they are used to treat mental illness, depression, grief, and pain while simultaneously inducing artificial numbness and detachment. They create one altered state to “correct” another.

My paintings aim to reflect the sense of isolation that is experienced in these states of emotional and chemical imbalance.

Artists Statement