My guiding principle is medium specificity: the idea that every art form is most powerful when it emphasizes its inherent qualities. For a given idea, I choose the medium, whether it be cinema, photo, sculpture, etc., that is be able to express what I am trying to say, and where the experience cannot be replicated in a different medium.

As a result, I don't usually “talk” or “write” about what my paintings mean. If I could have expressed it in words, I would have written it instead of painting it. David Lynch often said he would like to be able to explain his films but the films ends up being the explanation. He said you work so hard to get the thing built, all the elements to feel correct, the whole to feel correct, in this beautiful language, and the second it's finished people want you to change it into words. Similarly, stand-up comedian Mitch Hedberg was often asked to write scripts, but he said that was like being a chef and getting asked to farm. I like to say that words are a blunt instrument, and just one medium of many that can be used to communicate. I choose the medium best fit to express what I want to express.

I can say that my work is dialectical. Reality is often seemingly made up of polarities, and two things, regardless of whether we place them on a continuum, spectrum, or diagram, can exist at the same time. Light and shadow. Beauty and ugliness. Precision and imperfection. Caution and optimism. Constance and change.

On the “technical” side, I primarily work with acrylic, spray, ink, and oil to create extremely textured, often visceral portraits. If traditional “painterliness” emphasizes the brushstrokes of the painter, my work is “paintly”, emphasizing the paint itself — its thickness, texture, and consistency — and working both against and with its resistance and unpredictability, discovery through disturbance, balancing precision and chaos through intuition — emotion made material.