At my day job, I work to digitally manipulate landscape photographs to make nature appear perfect. In my art, I also manipulate nature, but to a different end. I seek to create a new, never-before-seen nature with artificial colors and compositions. The amorphous shapes cascade and collide into each other, taking on the appearance of different things — birds, leaves, butterflies — for different people.

The paintings begin with drawings that I make of the climbing crossvines that grow around the windows of my home and workspace. I copy the sketches onto masked areas of the canvas and then cut away the masks and paint.

The hues and layouts of the painting are refined as it develops. When one mask is peeled back to reveal a layer of color, the way for the next layer emerges. Repeating these steps builds toward an intuitive and formal harmony. Once achieved, memory associations surface, and titles are chosen to enhance what I feel the painting is already saying.