about the artist
What fascinates me about a circle, square, or triangle is its mutability when it comes in contact with color, pattern, and placement. Even though I paint without recognizable imagery, content is important to my work. Source material for my paintings comes from combining, interpreting, considering and reconsidering the bits and pieces of raw material, impulses, inspirations, and signals that exist around me all the time. From the colors I see on a neighbor’s jacket while walking my dogs, to tire marks on the road, to the lush canopy of trees I live under here in Memphis, imagery for my work is everywhere. I use drawing as an editorial tool to filter and narrow down the immense visual input the world offers.
Although ideas for paintings emerge out of my daily drawing practice, once I begin a painting I focus on formal design elements like the relationship between a warbling line next to a straight line, empty space alongside layered shapes, and how color ties everything together. When a painting leaves my studio to live in the world, I let go of the original storyline that was born out of my personal references and source material. Just as each person responds to the sound of a trumpet in a subway tunnel in their own way, my goal is to give the viewer the chance to see some element of their story within my work. By applying my process of abstraction to a large glass public art piece, I would want to offer travelers a moment of pause in passing
