My subject is color. I am a process painter, meaning my work emerges through the engagement with the materials themselves. Paintings are rarely planned or preconceived. The first mark leads to the next, and over time (often many months) the painting unfolds. My painting process is intuitive, exploring color relationships, primarily, and the space and light created within and around color. Ultimately my tendency is to quiet the chaos and simplify, paring down the noise using shapes, simple forms, and blocks of color. I want the work to spark a wordless, visceral experience of beauty and aliveness — a pure, energetic interaction with color and form, space and light. I believe that our ability to perceive and experience beauty is one of the gifts of being human. I look for it everywhere, and tend to obsess over it in my surroundings. It’s what brought me to painting — a sort of primal urge to create something beautiful, to live it, to know it, to be it. I live in Cape Elizabeth Maine, and I paint in a sweet studio overlooking Portland’s working waterfront. Maine’s natural beauty —the landscape, the seasons, and constantly changing weather— all inform and inspire the mood in the studio and the work itself.