In my latest group of paintings I have decided to turn my focus inward. I started painting straight from my imagination and uncovered a new world that had previously only existed in my head. Now attempting to paint from this world I can construct my own new reality. I find painting from life a valuable a means of interpreting our reality, but I want to explore the possibility of creating the same effect by looking inside myself. In painting it is vastly easier when I am looking at something Then I am able to visually investigate this world, translating it to a two-dimensional surface. Creating without looking was a huge problem, everything I attempted without looking was clunky and fake. I eventually figured out that if I create an image in my mind and concentrate on holding that image. It became possible to paint that visual reality.

In thinking about this new way of creating I had to investigate the idea of imagination. Where do the images come from that float through your brain? Was it possible to imagine something that you have never visually seen? Or more basically, is your imagination made up of bits of visual memory or can it create on its own? I came to the conclusion imagination creates, but uses the language of our visual world. My work has been explained to me as having a visual language like sitcom television. This seems logical to me, as I can't deny that I am a person who grew up watching television. I have to accept cartoons and television shows as part of the visual language my brain has stored. It is only natural when I turn exclusively inward to create that this shows through. In my painting I deal with my figures in a way often labeled caricature or slightly cartooned. I hate thinking of my work in this manner. In reading about the German painter Otto Dix a critic refuted the term caricature. Instead he called Dix's portraits painfully honest character assessment. I found a real connection with that statement, as what I have been trying to do in my work is make the characters in my story well rounded. The distortions, colors and expressive gestures come from trying to interpret how I imagine the characters personality. Hopefully this creates individuals with a life more rounded than that of a sitcom's light facade.

Previously I had tried to ignore these new paintings as work exclusively about myself. I wanted them to be subject matter that could relate to any one, which in some part still is true, but I can't deny their direct creation from my thoughts fears and emotions. Max Beckmann is an artist obsessed with the concept of uncovering the self. His paintings were a source for that investigation. He created the compositions from his mind in an attempt to express large issues of identity. In my large paintings the focus is along the lines of Beckmann's thinking. The paintings are created as narrative departure points for a multi-leveled investigation of the self. While they are hiding under the humorous pretext of sitcom lightness, these are meant to be deep paintings. When I as artist look back at them after their completion their meaning is slow to uncover itself even to me. I do not know all the answers about exactly where the work comes from. These paintings evolve as I contemplate them. The work form from the untraceable odd corners of my imagination, becoming an intense confrontation of myself, and an investigation into a new imagined and constructed reality.