In 1998, following a secret, urgent, 72 hour burst in the studio, I found myself painting like an Abstract Expressionist. Though still in art school, this was a radical departure for me. I did not realize it at the time, but I was privately rebelling against the constraints of meaning and the intricately layered and meticulous way I had been painting. Likewise it was a rebellion against the heavy rhetoric and theory which was thick in the air. It was both thrilling and frightening to abandon all the devices and images I had hitherto employed when painting, and I’ve carried that abandon with me through my practice.

Each of these paintings begins with a hidden desire upon which I place a set of parameters. The desire is usually a specific color craving and the parameters usually have to do with form and process––shape or palette, and layering or erosion. Thusly, the painting becomes purely about itself. I have no preconceived notion of what will emerge. It becomes a collaborative exchange between the painting and me, until the many moments and intersections are resolved into an overall aesthetic. It is liberating to be free of the associations of imagery: the borders and constraints of meaning are loosened, and non-verbal language takes over.