What are my paintings? Lush, fanciful landscapes abundant with flora and sometimes inhabited by spiritual beings and beasts and more recently myself.

But my paintings are not fantasies. They are instead a re-composition of images. Images taken from religious and non-religious art; from Eastern and Western cultures spanning across many art historical periods, and images of nature and the environments we live in. I encounter these images in my daily life, when I travel on holiday, in a book, in a museum, on a page of a magazine. They are transformed and reappear in a spiritual world I create- different yet vaguely familiar.

It interests me that even with familiar imagery each person brings his or her own personal interpretation. Even symbolic forms carry different meanings for each of us. Familiar imagery opens the door to an alternate type of experience of symbolic understanding and feelings. My paintings take images from multiple sources and cultures, and places them into compositions meant to facilitate this form of reaction. I intuitively create these landscapes from sources that resonate with me… creating my own personal worlds of wonder, and worlds, which I have started to introduce myself into. Even though viewers may not be concretely familiar with all the sources- it doesn't matter, because each individual is drawn to some aspect that appeals to their own personal culture, and I invite individual reinterpretations of the images.

The materials and manner in which I construct my paintings also create a familiarity for the viewer. Painting on wood panels and using traditional egg tempera, raised metal leaf and incorporating intense colors, viewers often comment that they perceive the influence of Christian religious paintings, Asian art and Persian miniatures. Yet like the images I choose, these too have been reprocessed through my personal interpretations. The composition and color palette of my paintings are procured strictly from my intuition. Traditional colors and spatial concepts are sometimes disregarded to heighten the visual experience of the viewer. Distortion of spatial planes and calmer flat areas are intended to visually pull and lead the viewer around my work.

My work is not political or philosophical. It is personal. My work invites viewers to embark on visual tours of an unknown yet familiar looking world aimed at becoming a part of their cultural and emotional consciousness.