I am an American artist whose work speaks to stories – singular stories as well as shared histories.
I am a contemporary realist who uses oils and a research-based process to describe what has not “figured” in public narratives on equality, justice, and beauty. I am drawn to subjects that are defined by questions of equity and justice as well as ideas, and ideals, of beauty and grace.
I am a figurative painter who works in a painterly tradition and from observation whenever possible. Figures are central to my work whether I am completing a portrait commission or investigating an ongoing problematic condition such as the peculiar and pernicious trajectories of slavery.
I am equally drawn to painting the landscape, treating this genre as a portrait of a place.
In my current project “A Genealogy of Memory and Imagination.” I imagine the lives of people who lived between 1870 and 1950 in Washington DC where they experienced the aftermath of slavery, segregation, and the quest for civil rights. The subject of the paintings is memory and imagination – whether private or public, personal or communal — and the ability of oil painting to render both.