My paintings form vignettes with patterns, scenes, and still life. The work evokes a book of hours, illuminated manuscript, or storyboard, and incorporates the pictorial language where image intersects with design. The narratives depicted are open-ended resembling a scene on a stage, or a movie still. A sense of place and season is suggested. The patterned backdrops form an imagined wall, an indeterminate space, existing between architecture and the natural world which is depicted inside the inner frame. The entire painting is a transition away from the wall of the room that the viewer inhabits into the world within the interior of the painting. In Hollyhock, Volcano, and Butterfly, a volcano erupts in the background, contrasted with the paired hollyhock and butterfly, tranquil, in the foreground. This is a moment before a great change occurs, a transitional moment where a calm has been ruptured but its effects are not, yet, felt. The viewer is aware of this event before the subjects of the painting are affected.
In Bird, Caged, and Butterfly, a bird in a cage seems to converse with a butterfly that passes nearby. If the cage were opened and the bird set loose, would it fare well in the wild or perish too soon? The transition from the wilds to domestication is a philosophical leap, a place where an observer might yearn for a freedom that might be fleeting in the face of the dangers hidden within the allure.