ARTIST STATEMENT

Working from the personal and the ordinary – a paper coffee cup in the palm of my hand, a well-known landscape seen in a new way, friends and their children, family outings – my drawings and paintings are about what happens when the familiar suddenly undergoes a perspective shift and is revealed in all its wonder and infinite possibility. With this shift, ordinary things become nodes of rapidly expanding sets of connections, relationships and possible artworks.

Underlying this observational and experiential approach to art-making is a fascination with Darwin's theory of evolution as it applies to both biology and culture. Infinite variation, selection and change through time are concepts that unify projects as diverse as upcycling used coffee cups into art, painting aerial views of salt marshes along the New Jersey coast, an alternative families portrait series, and accepting a commission to paint the 14 stations of the cross in a contemporary manner for a local church.

Through an evolutionary lens, invisible becomes visible, local is revealed as global and the individual as an integral part of the community.