My current work investigates the limitations of paint and mark-making that carries the potential to be read as various aspects in various types of oil painting, such as the particular tenants of landscape painting that evoke surface or atmosphere. These material explorations look at how the various types of marks and texture indicate recognizable forms or space that can be attributed to various qualities of the textures of nature, such as the surface of water or the fog of a hazy morning. Simplification allows stroke, texture, and value, or the inherent nature of the paint, to be isolated and thus examined.

My primary inspirations derive from the landscape. I am originally from Orlando, Florida, and find many of my ideas for painting inspired by the skies of Michigan and Florida. I am influenced by painters such as Georgia O'Keefe, both for her paint handling and in composition and drawing, as well as John Evans for simplified form and use of color. I find that skyscapes provide a great opportunity to explore the nature of oil painting, or the act of working with layering paint, with a subject that is inherently layered as well, or atmosphere. The act of painting atmosphere is also a large part of painting representationally, where there are specific methods used in order to indicate the appearance of air or the effects of moisture in air on color and visibility. My intentions with these paintings is to explore the space between representational painting and abstraction, where this abstraction explores simplification and the limits of paint.