Artist StatementWhat I try to do in a painting is recreate for the viewer the way certain paintings make me feel when I look at them: like I'm being spread as the frosting of a very large cake. Like I could swim upward from where I'm standing. Like everything's going to be good from now on. My subject matter includes landscape, still life, and figures, especially women because they are so aesthetically fascinating to me. Whatever the subject, what I’m really after, what makes me feel so wonderfully odd—is great texture or a great fat textury line bumping up against another great fat textury blob. I want to create a visual that is not realistic but a flattened, spatially stylized interpretation of the real. Even though I return to certain subjects, such as a favorite model or type of landscape, the technique is different each time, I think because a big part of making art for me is the making—exploring and experimenting and seeing what new results I can produce. I like to be surprised by something that came from my own hands.