Artist Statement

My love for painting and drawing started at a young age, when many of my classmates would take the time to sit for me. I have always been intensely interested in people, their likenesses, their experiences, and the attempt to capture and distill their essence. My fascination with understanding people on a deeper level led me to major in Psychology in addition to Studio Art. I am enthralled by the greatest and most mysterious examples of portraiture in the past, including the work of Degas, Velázquez, Goya, and Pontormo, as well as the Egyptian Fayum portraits and ancient Roman Frescoes. In this day and age of constantly being confronted with a multiplicity of flickering images, what a profound experience it is to truly see and be seen.

My still-life paintings hold layers of meaning for me. They are formal inventions, engaged in the play of opposites including the juxtaposition of the intimacy of familial objects and books with the monumentality of architectural construction. At the same time, the objects are both vessels of memory and stand-ins for those who made the deepest marks upon my life.

Painting the landscape is my path to being fully present in the moment. I seek out the color harmonies and formal rhythms which play through the world like underlying melodies. The world has had more than enough of sorrow. I seek solace through the pursuit of my idiosyncratic sense of beauty.