Artist Statement

Recovery and loss are at the heart of my work. I grew up in the 60’s and 70’s and lived in many homes. My fragmented family contracted and expanded with time and childhood keepsakes are gone. A consummate effort to collect memorabilia provides the inspiration and medium for my work.

In 2013, I found a faux-wood vinyl covered photo album from the mid-sixties. It belonged to a middle school-aged boy whose carefully preserved pictures provided traces of a life. While they are not my own pictures, the salvaged collection of narratives at once nostalgic and related to autobiographical events provide an endless source for paintings, collages and drawings. The formal aspects of the pictures, the palette, forms and patterns have motivated years of work ever since.

Reimagining found photographs safeguard what is lost- a scrap of 1960’s kitchen wallpaper, a floral pillow, a pink aluminum lawn chair. It’s an amalgam of associations between vintage memorabilia, color and materiality.