The world right now is an incredibly stressful and chaotic place.  It is easy to become overwhelmed by all the stories of violence and conflict on the nightly news.  In our personal lives, we all have our own struggles and conflicts to deal with. Throughout my life, I have used art as an escape from the hardships I have to endure.  I hope that my artworks have the same freeing effect for my viewers: that they too might gaze at these natural places and feel that they are in a safe space, similar to the emotional I space I am in when I paint.

I am very interested in how a place can serve as a symbol or how people or things can symbolize a place.  Pinus taeda, or the loblolly pine, is a species native to Southern Maryland, therefore serving as a symbol of my life in this specific place.  While the trees and colors in my work are still based in observation, the compositions are of my own design, simplified and organized to create a sense of calm.  By re-seeing the place where I live, the place where I have struggled and felt sadness and fear, I transform my experience, and thus, in a way, have reordered my own life.  I have created a safe space within the boundaries of these trees, a space of order and tranquility within an otherwise chaotic world.  People say that intention is a powerful thing.  By making the place where I live more ordered and calm, I am manifesting a more ordered and calm reality.