STATEMENT OF WORK

I create paintings that explore the entangled ways memory, time, and place are interconnected. My work attempts to convey the unmappable, intangible essence existing beneath the more familiar structures of the visible world. My process begins with hand-drawn maps inspired by road maps and topographic surveys. These lines also evoke wood grain, wood-boring beetle marks, and ripples in water. I add ink and watercolor to create an assortment of dots, lines, and pools of color — each mark purposefully ambiguous: dots can be birds, rocks, or stars; lines can be roads, rivers, or the passage of time; pools of color can be clouds, lakes, or a mysterious presence. Then, like a cartographer, I label areas — not with real locations, but where marks and colors evoke feelings, thoughts, and memories. The words often express solastalgia: grief for vanishing wilderness and environmental destruction, and awe at the depth of geologic time. We live in a world digitally mapped from outer space to our front doors, yet we still don't know what "place" really means. My paintings bridge spiritual and internal landscapes with the physical world.