I experiment with materials and processes as a method of sorting out the chaos around me.  Drawing is much like journaling for me, except that the narrative only becomes obvious to me when I reflect upon the work. The layers that are added to my drawings are similar to the layers of my own daily and life experience.  I’m certain that many of my immediate surroundings affect everything I make, and certainly the colors I am drawn to. 

San Francisco provides the perfect balance between structure and nature. Instinctively my eyes are drawn to wires, bark, leaf patterns and spider webs.  My ears are full of my children’s voices discovering the world around them, in many ways, for the first time. Their voices point out rocks, dirt, sticks and car wheels - things I hadn’t really noticed before. The continually ask questions about what they observe around them, not just related to the natural world, but more often than not, about the society and culture they are growing up in. Often times I bribe my kids to paint with me so that I can borrow from their palette of color and engage in strange and curious conversation to release my own seriousness about what I’m doing - a vast difference from my usual studio practice, which is undisturbed silence.  I do what I can, when I can and try to not keep too much of my studio life a secret from them.  They’re fascinated by color and materials, and reflect on these topics often when seeing people, fashion and technology.  All things that are imbued in their daily experience. Having to explain so many things that I maybe don’t notice or rather take for granted, opens my mind to my own inhibitions and fears, and reminds me of the importance of the smaller details.  I suppose in some ways art making for me is like a collaboration with my kids as much as it is with the materials themselves.