Artist Statement

In 2022, I walked into the *Modern Women/Modern Vision* exhibition at the Denver Art Museum expecting to see compelling photography. I didn’t expect to be challenged — not only as a viewer, but as an artist. What I encountered were women using the camera not just as a tool, but as a provocation: to question representation, reality, and the complexity of selfhood.

Artists like Carrie Mae Weems, Cindy Sherman, and Rineke Dijkstra left a lasting imprint on me. Their works, while grounded in photography, echoed questions I had been circling in my own practice as a painter and draftsman: Who is being seen? How is identity performed, witnessed, and constructed? And how can art offer both intimacy and distance — a space for ambiguity as much as clarity?

Carrie Mae Weems showed me that the domestic can be political, that personal narrative can carry the weight of collective truth. Cindy Sherman revealed the slipperiness of the self — how identity can be costume, mask, fiction — and how even the gaze itself can be a performance. And Rineke Dijkstra reminded me that vulnerability is its own kind of strength — that stillness, awkwardness, and emotional honesty can be profoundly powerful.

These insights shifted how I approached my own work.

In both my drawings and paintings, I explore how identity bends and reshapes itself in response to context — how we adjust, perform, and conceal different versions of ourselves depending on who’s watching. Like actors on a stage, we step into roles shaped by family, friendship, memory, or even imagined expectation. I’m interested in that moment of transition — when a person slips, knowingly or unconsciously, into a version of themselves tailored to fit the room.

My figures are not fixed. They suggest emotion without confession, presence without full transparency. Often there’s a sense of ambiguity — a private self that remains just out of reach. This psychological tension drives my work: the quiet dissonance between who we are and who we appear to be.

In this way, I see my practice less as rendering likeness and more as revealing layers — of character, projection, and interior drama. I’m not trying to pin anyone down. I’m trying to sit with the complexity, the slipperiness, the truth that identity is always in motion.

Ultimately, I believe art can illuminate these internal negotiations — the ways we perform, protect, and reimagine ourselves. I believe art is a form of witnessing — not just of the external world, but of the shifting terrain within. My hope is that the work holds space for that recognition — for empathy, reflection, and a deeper seeing.

Artist Bio

I am a visual artist working in drawing and painting, and I was originally trained at San Francisco State University under the renowned draftsman Robert Bechtle of the 1960s Photorealism movement. After several years spent in restaurant kitchens, I returned to painting through plein-air landscapes along the cliffs of the Golden Gate. My early subjects — fog-swept coastlines, San Francisco neighborhoods, and the lively street scenes of Market Street and the Ferry Building — grounded my work in everyday observation and community.

Rather than pursue a graduate degree, I moved to Rome, where I studied directly from the master’s. I painted daily in the Campo de’ Fiori market and sketched in churches by afternoon, immersing myself in the visual language of the Renaissance. Travels through Florence, Bologna, Venice, and eventually the coastal villages of Cinque Terre deepened my connection to light, space, and atmosphere. I spent two years living in Riomaggiore, painting the sea-bound cliffs and harbor scenes — shaped as much by the landscape as by the warmth and generosity of the people who supported my work.