Four Pillars Artist Residency

Artist Statement

By infusing motifs from Japanese folklore, Chinese customs, and classical Western forms, my paintings celebrate this confluence of Asian imagery and the history of European painting. While my work is primarily figurative, I am most interested in the journey of light and its power to transfigure a subject.  I use observation as a starting point for more invented forms, investigating the abstract qualities in nature that captivate me visually. Whenever I paint from life, I spend equal time searching as I am making marks on a surface. The light shifts rapidly in an instance of looking away from the subject, and I’m confronted with an urgency to simultaneously interpret and invent color relationships as to remain coherent and true to my previous observation. It is an ongoing quest to activate the entire painting, keeping tension in the right areas while maintaining an overall sense of harmony and resolution. 

Painting has become a labor of constructing presences and keeping mysteries. In concealing and revealing form, I’ve stumbled into a journey of search, which requires faith, trust, and patience. I believe that what I do in the studio directly affects who I am as a person and how I conduct myself in the world.