I want to reveal an unconventional truth and beauty in the pain experience and investigate how it fits into the collective unconscious, classical mythologies, cultural trauma, and generational memory. In much of my work, I focus on the interior life of pain. I start with an original drawing, painting, or a digital manipulation of a photograph. Sometimes the process ends there; other times I proceed with the same image using a reductive/additive process, which alternately involves drawing, painting, collage, or extensive digital art. I crop, add, delete, and adjust layers until I reach an artistic explanation. This can conjure more disturbing questions, which may be further processed in another piece. My palette is often vivid or pastel; I especially like working with blues and pinks which to me connote comfort. The titles of my pieces are important to me and are often poetic or classical references or phrases from my own poems. At times, it feels as though art and pain are the two constants in my life. I devote much of my time to the former in order to counterbalance and relieve the negative feelings of the latter.