These paintings reference several interests; broadly speaking I like to look at architecture and nature to find reoccurring events, shapes and patterns. I set up most of my work with a structure that I come to through sketches done from observation. There is no exact formula to how I get to a picture, however I do like to include images found in the newspaper, magazines and books to further develop drawings into studies and then eventually larger scale paintings. I choose these pictures for many reasons, sometimes for the relevance to the subject matter, other instances for a particular shape, color, composition, and often, just because of an unexplainable infatuation with a picture. As certain motifs and signs have developed and reoccurred in my work, I have also decided to include found and recognizable shapes, such as street signs. These shapes go along with a world I try to dismember and recreate through the process, and development of a picture. I like to manipulate scale and pattern for metaphorical and also painterly reasons. One thing I try to consider is what happens when a particular situation such as gateways, walls, invisible and figurative are presented. I work to convey these ideas into paint and would like for the viewer to identify particular situations in the work to use as a framework to create their own image and idea.

Most of my recent paintings were based on the drawings I did over the summer while traveling in Israel. These studies were a general documentation of my trip. Images were taken from drawings I did in Haifa, Tel Aviv and the Golan Heights. Drawings were done from busses, gardens, balconies and the view while spending hours at sidewalk cafes. Some of these drawings were completed in places with specific historical or political importance. One picture was developed from a drawing done in Rabin Square. Another was worked from a drawing I did from three films at the Holocaust Museum. Although there were many artifacts and pictures depicting this horrible event, the images I found most touching in their quietness were the films of the trains and tracks that took Jews from the ghettos to concentration camps. During the last couple of days that I was in Israel the war with Hezbollah began. I have been interested in the newspaper, and politics for a while now, but have remained fairly disconnected from the actual events because of geographical distance. I felt a personal connection to this situation because of my recent experience in the places where missiles were shot daily. The way these sketches adapted in my studio into the paintings which they became during a politically turbulent time, reflect the atrocities of war, and the repetition of history and effects of unresolved tensions. While these events occur in such a large scale that effect many people's lives, the ideas also happen in our own interactions and dealings in the individual worlds that we create. I see the scale of these ideas to have a metaphorical importance and try to translate those concepts into paint.