Artist’s Statement

My works create a monumental scale within a very small area.  This paradox of a diminutive realm encourages the viewer to leave the everyday world behind.  The figurative images illustrate power relationships within the world of the particular painting or print. To keep the diminutive scenes open for the viewer to “enter,” the figures don’t occupy the spaces but appear 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.  A power relationship also exists between the viewer and the art work.  The brilliant color (in the paintings) and intricate detail (in the paintings and prints) seduces, and invites intimacy with each piece of art.  The size relationship between the viewer’s body and the small scale of the depicted scene allows the observer physical dominance over the art work as an object, while a low perspective contradicts this supremacy, persuading the audience to be submissive to the image.  This physical/psychological tension is the ultimate irony; the heart of which holds the viewer’s attention.  This irony questions the viewer’s power, and questions the viewer’s very physicality.