The act of creating is about looking for truths, not knowing the answers along the way. For me, the act of painting hovers on that edge between control and chaos.

My work focuses on extremes of being- the physical and the mental, anatomy and cognition. I am interested in the moments when they overlap and where they come apart. In paintings, I create spaces inhabited with bodies and depictions of thoughts where happiness, bliss, and euphoria are the proof of existence.

In my paintings I think of thoughts as clouds and mists, and how, before you can grasp a full idea, they float away and all you are left with is a feeling, an intention. I don't think of these thoughts as lost though, because they float up into the air. I think of them in a constant state of visual change, with only the pithy truth of the idea remaining as the actual, physical, constant. I think of the bodies in my paintings in the same way, in a constant state of becoming, with shifts so subtle that you might always feel the same and, only by looking back, do you see the transformation.

In the Ecstasy paintings I am working from photographs taken during times when a pure consciousness overwhelms the body; moments of pleasure, pain, meditation and sleep. They are figurative paintings looking at the physical body and the fantastic mental space these experiences create.

The Cosmos paintings are depictions of thoughts and mental activities during moments of enlightenment. They are ambiguous cosmic spaces, the universe or the inside of a cognitive thought. Crystalline structures map points of understanding within a mental space; an exoskeleton for thought.

A couple of years ago I read a rant by Roberta Smith (NY Times, 12/23/07) about the use of the word “practice” in describing what artists do. I carry the article around in my purse still. What she said was that art is never a practice. Artists are never practicing for a newer, better, piece of work. Every piece should be made in real life, in real time. Life is never a practice for something else. It is messy and imperfect and wonderful because of it. It is in those moments of uncertainty that beauty unfolds and reveals its self. There is no map to rightness. I try and make work in this way, take risks and not settle for good enough or a formula. I try also to really see at all times and hold on to the beautiful things that happen.