I try to stay alive to that thing that
catches my eye - or what Ludwig
Kirchner referred to as the
"ecstasy of first sight".

Although painting from life means the working method of direct observation, the term has a poetic meaning for me as well as it has come to describe my subject matter.

My subject matter is imagery that I stumble upon in the course of my daily business. Such imagery usually contains the germ of narrative and pictorial drama and can become the organizing principal of a painting.

I paint from direct observation, on location, as well as from my own photographs, which opens up possibilities of working with fleeting sights.

In order to create pictorial tension I seek to give space depth and at the same time to remain flat, to interpret rather than duplicate, to balance clarity with suggestion, figuration with abstraction, and to keep the alive the immediacy of the observation.