My mother would read me stories every night as a child. From The Lord of the Rings trilogy to Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain, these stories only fueled my passion for the imaginative, the wondrous, and even the bizarre, a passion that has followed me even to this day. My goal is to bring a little of this wonder into everything I make, whether I am painting a scene from a favorite book or an image completely from my own head. My parents raised me and my sisters in a committed Christian home, and I believe in my creative potential as a human made in God’s image. So I create fantastical paintings, paintings that involve subject matter spanning from the entirely fictional to the unique, strange, and beautiful visuals that exist in the world. I draw inspiration from the stories that enthralled me as a child, as well as from experiences I have had, places I have traveled to, and intriguing images of people and animals that catch my eye.

I usually work in oils, as I feel like the rich quality of that medium combined with realistic rendering adds credence to any subject I choose to work with. When I start with real images, I twist them, combine them, and add my own elements to them to form surrealistic environments meant to create specific moods in the viewer. Although my paintings do not always “make sense,” their purpose is not to be strictly representational. I try to excite an emotional response in the viewer and lead them to enter their own imaginative world. Despite the often fictional subject matter, I see these paintings as my own interpretation and representation of a very real truth: the world is a strange, diverse, currently broken, sometimes terrifying, but always extraordinary place. I hope to bring a little of the wonder that I see to the people around me.