I search in my work to portray those I know in a giant scale. Each portrait works to tell a story to the viewer about the subject, someone close to me, about what it is to be a person. They are much larger than life (80 inches tall) and examine each crevice and wrinkle in the topography of the human face. They are histories of people who make mistakes, who laugh, who disappoint, who belong to others. I depict people in everyday scenes in bright colors with oil paint. Often my subjects are painted with the objects that we surround ourselves with. This aids in telling their story. A pet parakeet, a hand of playing cards, a wine glass all recreate the moment I captured first with my camera. They tell us something about the subject and the moment in the world I am processing and translating into a painting.

I make my work in part to capture a memory image, a vision of the person I am portraying that cannot change. I paint the people in my life in order to remember them. Life constantly proves itself to be flexible and changing, shifting, winding, unexpected. It is made up of little moments of joy and beauty amid loss and bittersweet truths. I paint images of those I love to capture them, to remember and make permanent a moment of sweetness before it will inevitably be reduced to memory.

My experience in the Peace Corps in rural Morocco taught me that people, all people, have similar needs and people, no matter how different their backgrounds, share common experiences such as pain, love, loss, disappointment, embarrassment, joy and contentedness that make us human. This idea of depending on one another and the world that we live in is central to my work. I paint those around me that have given me support, have caused me pain, and have made me laugh. I will care for them because they will need it just as I will inevitably look to them for support. The connections I have made to people in different parts of the world, of different ages and cultures always remind me that there is something very essentially vulnerable in all of us, something that needs tending to and care.