There is beauty and honesty in balance. Nothing, not even concepts, can exist in the extreme. Whatever is pulling one direction needs to be tied to whatever is pulling in the opposite to prevent everything from flying off into oblivion. At the same time, however, balance is tense since the potential for getting sucked to one extreme or the other is always present.

I am interested in finding this balance with my work. I am looking for a perfectly still moment that is neither too much one direction, nor too much the other. Compositional elements, colors, values, concepts, and illusionistic forms all work against each other to create a tense but static state. I am trying to find that moment of weightlessness between jumping up and falling down. I try to coax my work into residing somewhere between silly and melodramatic, clothed and nude, light and dark, rough and smooth, traditional and contemporary.

I believe I find this balance most efficiently when I work intuitively. I feel that my unconscious mind constantly contemplates every possibility and the best solutions float to the surface. The whole process becomes this system of unconscious construction, then destruction, then reconstruction, then redestruction, and on and on. It all seeks balance.

I think our modern world attempts to tell us that we exist, or should exist, in the extremes. I like to think that my work rebels against that sort of polarized thought. I would like to think it shows existence, albeit unsettling, caught between opposing forces.