Between 2000 and 2006 I completed a series of paintings, entitled “Momento Mori” that engage photographs of my family and childhood taken by my father (who passed away in the 1980s).  The photographs are transformed through emotional memory to create imaginatively real spaces that expand or even depart from the verisimilitude of the snapshot while retaining the spontaneity of the moment captured.  Making these paintings involved me in a process of returning through memory and imagination to my childhood and the places captured in my father’s photographs and discovering what I consider to be the iconic elements within everyday family life.  Following the “Momento Mori” paintings, I created a series called “Cabin Paintings” while living at the historic Byrdcliffe artists’ colony in upstate New York.  As the focus of my work evolved from family photographs to painting directly from the landscape, I became increasingly fascinated by the interplay between natural and architectural forms. 
 
The experience of painting from life is intrinsically about being in the world and looking at nature.  Creating the cabin paintings was a radically different painting experience from the work I did based on photographs, which was about distilling an image from a frozen moment in time.  While painting outdoors, I am engaged in the process of time unfolding.  The cabin paintings are an effort to reflect this meditative experience rather than to render nature according to the conventions of realism.  They are action paintings of a sort, documenting the inherent fluidity of visual experience. 
 
The gouache paintings that I made during a residency in Cappadocia, Turkey, and the more recent watercolor paintings I made while living in Greece continue to explore and expand upon my fascination with depicting the natural world.  My current work reflects my interest in simplified geometric shapes and in exploring the permeable border between naturalism and abstraction.