The paintings I make often feel like vignettes from a larger narrative. Intent aside, painting is not exactly storytelling. I want the viewer to know they are looking at a painting. I want to make images that are realistic enough to draw the viewer in with representational familiarity. But then I want to augment that familiarity by asserting color, painterly abstraction, and hard edged graphic elements.

I originally became interested in architecture after 9/11. The destruction I witnessed from my 6th floor window on September 11, 2001 made it clear that what I took for granted as permanent would never be the same. Watching the World Trade Center towers come down I realized that buildings, like people, were fated to a similar cycle of life and death. With this basic notion of impermanence, I began to seek out examples from the world around me that spoke to transformation.

What followed 9/11 was a surprising housing boom. At that time I was living in a part of Brooklyn that saw very rapid real estate expansion and still does. Overnight, blocks I was familiar with were razed and converted to condominiums, often incongruous with their surroundings. Initially angered by the change, I learned to appreciate the juxtaposition and discovered the inherent beauty in decay and development. The conflation of such opposite sensations introduced me to a type of anxiety and aspirational hope. In my work, I try to capture this by suggesting impermanence, precariousness but also renewal.