I place my paintings somewhere at the cross roads of modernism and history painting, where I my interests are gathered and then translated through gesture and form, luminosity and space. That is why the still lifes I construct and then observe have become an ongoing working method where basic subjects such as bread, wood, and fruit, are organized and used as random elements that challenge my expectations and abilities. In the process of observing and recording these reconstructions I look for situations which Meyer Shapiro says "hold action in potential" alongside "the freedom of possibility." For within the artifice of the still life genre the natural world strongly resonates and I can make choices in terms of formal expression. I work from a place where the act of perceiving becomes a place of contemplative engagement.