The extreme can feel so real and unreal at the same time. I love the chaos and adventure of human interaction augmented by the process of growing and trying to make it through life. My current body of work focuses on two different sides of observational figure painting/ drawing. I have included sketches that reflect my interest in the gesture, form, anatomy and motion of the figure. These figure studies are a record of my thinking process abbreviated in a line based short hand. The larger oil paintings represent a different end of the spectrum. These works employ the figure for a narrative purpose and have a more complex construction process to bring the viewer the story. The images are a result of a composite of sources, though most the elements are from observation they function in a way that is much richer than any one observed source. The stories are from life reexamined and distilled into theatrical versions of social situations. I am currently exploring the theme of how relocation changes our sense of identity. I place the people in my work at odds with each other or their environments and it comes out a mixture of complicated feelings. I like balancing the fun of chaos with the dual joy and torture of intimacy; solitude as a sanctuary and penance. I try to express this by combining the dangerous with the whimsical. The characters in my paintings are often in search of or reaching for something that is just out of their grasp. The feeling of longing or the drive of curiosity is like the painting processes itself.