Connect and find your wings.

What I couldn't hear

I was the kid who watched mouths instead of listening for words, who learned early that a room could be loud and I would still miss most of it. Color was not decoration to me. It was information — the one channel that came through clearly when everything spoken did not.

That distance never fully closed. It is still why I paint the way I do: loud color, plain shapes, nothing left for the viewer to strain to hear.

What addiction taught me

Watching my sons live through addiction, and losing my mother, are the two events that actually run this body of work. I did not paint my way to a tidy conclusion about either one. I painted to stay upright while they were happening.

That grief and that watching are what run through the five stages of loss, worked slowly enough to actually sit with each one instead of rushing to the next.

"I encourage you to fight addiction, habits of fear, and isolation."

Why birds

Birds started appearing in the paintings before I understood why. Wings, mostly. Something about weight, and about lift — about carrying something and still being able to rise.

The bird was never a metaphor I chose on purpose. It is what kept showing up while I painted my way through the hardest years, and it is still what shows up now — in the steps, in the stages, in the ordinary objects I keep coming back to.

Artist statement