Most artists like myself have an inherent love for materials and I vividly remember the first time I wanted to be a painter.  That moment was standing in front of a Van Gogh painting- seeing the way he handled textures of paint and wanting to do the same.  The love of paint and how it can create an illusion of space or sit on the surface of a canvas like some juicy jam is what pulled me into painting in my twenties.  I enjoy seeing those possibilities of paint and how it reacts with the surface material.  This love for tactile things mixed with the desire to express myself is why I started making art and the intuitive way I work is a process often made up of additions and subtractions.  It can feel out of control and risky but I really seem to get the best results this way.  The images seem to resonate more when I'm not trying to control the entire process, letting the material communicate it's own terms.  The image in my work is key to a particular thought I want to communicate but also acts as a jumping off point for the dialogue I want to have with the material.   

Over the years, my painting application has changed from heavily applied painting methods in my twenties, to now applying thinner layers of paint.  For now, most all of my work incorporates the figure on some level-  whether stylized, abstracted or just giving reference to the figure.  The figure, whether human or animal, is used symbolically in an imaginary landscape to communicate emotion or just a state of being.  Some pieces I title while others, which seem too abstract to label, I leave untitled.  Overall, the main reoccurring formal elements in my work throughout the years has been movement, structure/form, space, texture and atmosphere or light.