The abstract painting genre resonated in college, it felt meaningful and obscure, evocative and elusive. This creative process had the power to uplift, suspend self-consciousness and time, and dissolve any sense of limitation.

Abstract painting means different things to different people, for me abstract painting has many faces. Over the years I’ve become acquainted with aspects of myself that have found expression through my painting. If you look at my body of work you can read it as a memoir that follows the different terrain of my experiences.

Some of the work is gestural, improvisational, visceral, primal even — you can sense a turbulence and an energy which may appear chaotic and yet is still coherent. Whether a painting has “worked”, has been dependent on my recognition of it’s quality of aliveness, and the exhilaration that free expression evokes. At first my tendency was to attribute the aliveness in the process, as a quality of the painting. The painting seemed alive. Over time I’ve realized that this quality of animated energy and turbulence, are the reflections of my own inner world, and of the outer world in which we all find ourselves.

Besides an improvisational approach to painting, I also employ a strategic and structural approach. Paintings of this sort are more imaginative, dreamlike and cerebral, often involving patterns, layers and transparency. With all my work I hope to evoke a sense of presence, the feeling of life, if not the illusion of life: feelings like energy — life is radiant, of generosity — life is a gift, and of wonder — because life is a mystery.

A third category of my work, is a hybrid of the above two and in all three categories, color is critical. It carries the feelings and functions like the heart that connects the solar plexus to the head. It reconciles the physical with the conceptual.