ARTIST STATEMENT

I explore how memories and feelings become attached to the places we inhabit. In Surface Memory, forms hover between a body, a branch, and a piece of terrain. I’m drawn to the feeling of recognizing something without being able to name it. Living and working in the Hudson Valley has made me more aware of how my surroundings enter the work, and how my experience of them changes as I get older.

Through transfers, pouring, and drawing, I build surfaces that retain traces of earlier stages. Even after I cover or scrape back a passage, something of it remains and affects what happens next. For me, this has a connection to memory: an experience can stay with us while the way we understand it changes. I want the paintings to allow that kind of reconsideration.

The greens in Chlorophyll Field came from algae spreading across nearby ponds. I built the orange center through repeated transfers, then painted green back into it, breaking up its boundary. As the form changed, it began to feel like a self-portrait. My thoughts about aging and becoming familiar with a new place entered through that form. The connection emerged while I was painting, and it changed how I understood what I had made. I left the image open enough for someone else to bring their own memories and associations to it.