With current environmental discourse in mind, the Arcadian notion of landscape no longer reflects our social
or geological realities. I am interested in the unpredictability the wilderness poses and the potential for violence
to erupt. Although the act of civilizing or personifying the natural world becomes an inevitable part of image
making, this negotiation between wonder and deceit is what fascinates me.
My work relies heavily on a methodology informed by experiential knowledge and imagination. By filtering
personal experiences and memories of living in a temperate rainforest, I produce work that oscillates between
abstraction and representation. It is this intangible notion of memory that provides transcendence beyond
representational accuracy and absolute fiction. I respond to the plein-air tradition in North American painting by
acknowledging the role of artist as also being explorer. However, rather than positing the landscape as a site of
heroic spectacle, I opt for creating an inhospitable environment; a place that better illustrates the capricious
effects of the natural world.