The artist Wayne Thiebaud calls painting “life as a bravura stroke." I take that as my mantra. I look at ordinary objects and attempt to move the viewer in unexpected ways.

My paintings take license with color and shape in the form of semi-abstract marks and gestures. I’m more concerned with the movement or energy the forms take than a representation of the objects themselves. I want to take the viewer on a ride to a place between realism and expressionism. A place that feels fresh and joyful like music or dance when all the elements are aligned and you are very much “in the zone.”

I usually begin by making sweeping intuitive gestures, sometimes adding stamped icons or shapes building the painting from there. Acrylic and watercolor are my media of choice because of their rapid drying ability; I sometimes add graphite, oil pastels or tissue for particular layering effects.

I pay homage to many influences among them Grace Hartigan, Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline Richard Diebenkorn, Henri Matisse, Howard Hodgkins, Frida Kahlo and an abstract form of Japanese calligraphy known as bokusho and finally to Nelson Grofe, my high school art teacher, who set me on the path.