Artist Origins

I grew up on Cape Cod, where the line between land and water never holds still. Salt, wind, and pine were constants—everything else was change. The tide taught rhythm, the woods taught solitude, and together they became my first language. I learned early that creation and erosion are not opposites, but twins.

My first memory of making began with someone else’s mark—a black line on paper I was asked to transform. I remember the unease, the thrill of it. Maybe that was the moment I understood: every act of art begins in surrender. Today, I still start with instinct—a gesture, a flaw, a texture that resists me. From there, I build until form finds itself.

Mud came before paint, hand before brush. I’ve always been drawn to materials that carry memory—sand, plaster, iron, salt. They feel alive, responsive, capable of transformation. The surfaces I make aren’t planned; they evolve, like weather on stone or water across wood. I work until something hums—that quiet, resonant moment when accident becomes intention.

The natural world remains my constant collaborator: oxidation, sediment, tide. I look for beauty in what time alters—the rusted hinge, the mineral bloom, the soft scarring of wind. These are not symbols of decay, but evidence of persistence.

Each painting is less a picture than a pulse, a dialogue between matter and memory, movement and stillness. Meaning arrives slowly, like light through water, shaped as much by what’s hidden as what remains.