Artist Statement
These paintings are conceived as a visual poem. The imagery represented is drawn from my personal and familial histories, memories, and especially the experiences of grief and faith. In my paintings I explore how visible forms house invisible truths, informed by Catholic theology which defines a sacrament as a visible sign of an invisible reality.
Each painting is carefully and tenderly rendered to be experienced in person, in time, inviting contemplative attention. Apparent realism contrasts with the primacy of material through exposed paint strata as well as through subtle perceptual distortions and non-representational gestures. These interruptions in illusionism all draw attention to the process of seeing, making, and reaching for – and beyond – the thing depicted. In this way the paintings convey how certain experiences (of grief, for example) cannot be constrained by discursive forms but become eloquently inarticulate.