I am primarily a figurative oil painter, although my practice also includes making studies in colored pencil. My work is centered around a feeling: reaching for closeness. Figures meet, touch, or avoid each other. Each painting starts with a real memory, moment, or relationship, and then I work through what it means by playing with color and symbolic objects drawn from my surroundings or recent sketches. I use elements of symmetry and asymmetry, mirrored poses or doubled objects, as a way to explore what connects the self and the other, or even the past, present, or future versions of oneself. I find that all of these elements together reveal tension or closeness between the figures that their poses alone don’t show: moments of clarity only present once the painting is completed.

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