“ I use the still life genre as a vehicle to pair intense direct observation with an underpinning of abstract structure, rhythm, shape and color. I am equally interested in translating the observable world into paint, developing carefully arranged divisions of surface geometry and exploring abstract color relationships.

 The objects depicted in my still lifes have all been held on to over many years, not only for their visual qualities, but for the attachments to certain memories, places and people they hold for me. Old clothing, dishes, vases, hemlock cones, birds nests, fabric scraps and stones all contain small stories and memories. I imagine these stories overlapping across time and space, converging in unassuming vignettes arranged in the studio. Certain elements reappear from painting to painting like characters weaving in and out of a serial narrative. Figures make themselves know occasionally, but often the human element is only alluded to by the signs of daily activity; a cup and saucer, a meticulously placed collared shirt, heirloom bowls, seashells from a favorite family trip and various bric-a-brac all overtly staged by the human hand. The stories the objects in these stagings tell are opaque.  Their meanings open to a slow unraveling of elusive symbols and connotations; the folds of a christening dress repeat in a sea of white china and shells or bits of bone and dried flowers weaving into the pattern on a cut of fabric. Room has been left open for exploration of the visual and material qualities of the paintings without the trappings of explicit narrative.”