Biography:

When I was living beneath a deciduous canopy in a tent on a farm in Texas, alongside an emu, chickens, pigs, and llamas, I never thought that I would find my muse in Lansing, Michigan. Indeed, the insightful and inquisitive eyes of my colleagues and professors in our small but vibrant campus artist community pushed my brushstrokes far beyond their previously self-imposed limits. Prior to coming to Michigan State, my art was a means to an end, an unrelenting quest to bottle life in a painting. As I was challenged to question my own methods, I slowly gave in to the process itself. My paintings became markedly more chaotic yet more provocative. No longer was I re-presenting life but trying to convey the fluster of being alive... In graduate school I abandoned myself to the painting process and let the images come forth on their own. I have only known my mind to work in opposites. Instead of an organized and preconceived art piece, my paintings became floods of ideas, impulses, reflexes, and intuitions. Through the devastation of a flood, objects, people and events that were never meant to be together are strangely juxtaposed. Light twists and smears. An unobtrusive object in our daily lives is thrown out of place and suddenly seems unique and eye-catching. The organization of the world is turned upon itself and we must question the order that we try to superimpose onto the inherent chaos of life. We must float through the disasters to unravel hope, hooked under tree branches and reflected in puddles.

2009