When I first began to paint non-representationally, I was guided by a professor who often said that a painting either told a story or felt like music. I set out to create worlds using vocabularies of their own, conveying systems of relationships that are self-explanatory, not tied to any one concept, and can conjure associations respective to the perceiver as a complex individual while presenting a composition that succeeds in the kind of dynamism that makes a painting feel alive- makes it feel like music. When enjoying instrumental compositions the focus stays within the medium: listening for rhythm, sound, melody, texture, structure, tempo, etc. I find this kind of mental direction analogous to deciphering the expression of formal elements in a Mondrian or a Mitchell. We use the associations we have of the visual features to derive emotion and significance from the work on an individual level.

Another conceptual layer appears when words/lyrics are introduced, creating more concrete associations that vary on a scale from vague to explicit. I want my collages to feel like a lyrical song, able to tell the viewer’s story back to them through the layering of words and images that create a compositional narrative. After all, there is only so much the artist can do, and the rest of the experience is relinquished to the people who choose to look.