Is This Desire?, oil paint on wood panel, 30 x 40 in., 2018.

Through my artwork I explore the concept of escapism through the creation of ‘dream-spaces’. These dream-spaces I create blur the lines between realistic representation and abstraction, to create imagery that is both representative of the natural physical world and our emotional sense of the world. With this painting I wanted to capture what an emotion, such as desire, would look like visually. I was thinking about desire as an active emotion, one that can be fulfilled but not felt again once that object, outcome, or person of desire is obtained. Desire is in constant motion and consumes whatever it is that is being desired. In this painting I use a rose as a symbol of desire and abstract it behind layers of different imagery, such as light reflections and other plant material. This form of abstraction allows me to express desire as being about more than just wanting someone or something. It is about our idealized associations with whatever it is that is being desired that give it meaning.

This painting has exposed wood edges.

Exhibited in 2019 at Super Wonder Gallery as part of the "Upstart Exhibition" in Toronto Canada and at the 2019 Daegu Art Fair in South Korea with Partial Gallery.