I was born and raised in California and came from a science and maths background, but I have been painting regularly since 2001.
When my parents passed ten years ago, I became preoccupied with the huge archive of family snapshots I discovered in their garage. Some were so fascinating in their strangeness that I painted their subjects many times over. Eventually, the whole collection became the focus for feelings about alienation, meaning, remembrance, public and private persona, longing, and so on. Ultimately, I began combining these ‘characters’ in scenes I borrow from other parts of my life, such as horror movies from my childhood, vintage advertisements, landscapes I’ve lived in, and paintings I have loved.
More recently, I have been developing images purely from imagination and memory. I begin with an abstraction, either in charcoal or paint, where I look for imagery. I reject most of them, but when I find something interesting - a falling figure or a bull or a seated baby - I use it to develop an open narrative scene. The possibilities are wide open, but my goal is to create an artwork about humanness that is, to quote Alan de Botton, “a constant source of support and encouragement for our better selves.”
I was the proud and grateful winner of the Regional Prize for the Midlands in the ING Discerning Eye Competition in 2022 and was shortlisted for the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition in 2024. I have paintings in several private collections.
