Artist’s Statement

I am interested in the irony of creating a deep space and/or a monumental scale within a very small area.  This paradox of a diminutive realm encourages the viewer to leave the everyday world behind.

In 2002 I began a series of paintings that also include images of the human figure.  To keep the diminutive settings open for the viewer to “enter,” the figures do not occupy the spaces but remain peripheral - appearing in pictures on the walls, floors or tabletops.  These images of figures are in dialogue with the domestic interiors they inhabit, each adding to the story of the other. The images of figures are chosen to illustrate power relationships within the world of the particular painting.

A power relationship also exists between the viewer and my paintings, whether the viewer is consciously aware of it or not.  Drawn in by brilliant color and intricate detail that invite intimacy with the painting, the viewer is often confronted with a disturbing, powerful image that in a larger format might repel them.  The size relationship between the viewer’s body and the small scale of the painting allows the viewer physical dominance over the painting as an object, while an unusual perspective contradicts this supremacy by persuading the viewer to be submissive to the image.  The physical/psychological tension of this struggle is at the heart of what holds the viewer’s attention, calling into question the viewer’s power and their very physicality.