My work is inherently narrative, expressionistic and symbolic.  It serves as a conduit to express internalized thoughts and perceptions.  Utilizing imagination to convey a visually charged, poetic interpretation of experience is a quality I continually seek to evoke.  With the naked eye, the world is drawn through optical nerves, perceived and decoded in the brain as common recognizable symbols.  When these perceived images collide with imagination we are afforded one of the greatest attributes of being human: the ability to dream while we are awake and more importantly, the ability to act upon that vision.  The desire to merge the pure fleeting beauty of this physical world, with the strange, flawed, disjointed, imaginative interior world of the mind intrigues me to no end and it is through this union that my work fundamentally comes into being.  

I continually seek to materialize the ideas that are mysteriously present, that which I have made no conscious effort to evoke.  I am not interested in forming an idea around a specific subject, if the idea has depth, concepts will naturally embed themselves in it.  Creatively speaking, that which is prodded and forced into existence is often void of mystery, outcomes are predictable even before they are developed.  That which naturally originates in the subconscious contains the greatest element of mystery at the onset.  I find ideas interesting to decipher after a project is finished.  I have little to no interest in trying to completely understand it while creating the work.  I consider a project a success if the journey to create it is mentally and visually surprising, if the idea starts off in one place and through its materialization, transforms into quite another. I am fascinated by the creative journey that occurs when one image or idea opens up, builds, informs, and complements another.  By living in and inhabiting an expansive idea for a long period of time one can arrive at a place creatively that they could have never otherwise reached.  It is ultimately this revelatory journey that keeps me intensely dedicated to the idea of making art.

Drawing and painting narrative-based images led to years of writing narrative fiction in order to explore what occurred before and after the frozen moments I was capturing in graphite, ink and paint. I then began working with HD video so I could incorporate numerous visual images, motion, time and sound into the narratives I was creating.  Through this progression of mediums I reached a place where the majority of my ideas no longer fit the nature of the static image.  The idea dictated the form and I did not feel bound to a singular medium or method of depiction.  The scope of my work began to include full-scale and miniature set construction, three-dimensional sculpture / prop and costume design and numerous other aspects associated with filmmaking.

I often work laterally in a way that each completed physical work is part of a greater whole.  I have found the short film structure to be one of the most exciting ways to bridge the connection between disparate mediums.  As an individual artistic form of expression this cinematic mode of production can mirror that of a movie studio, although the scope and financial scale are obviously quite different and should each be judged according to their own creative merits. 

Landscape is a major influence in my work. The sense of a place, discarded, unexpected objects and geographical details, form the foundation for an imaginative reinterpretation of the landscape and a narrative to occur.  Memories of past environments, the present place in which I live and the landscapes I encounter while traveling, all exert a simultaneous and continuous influence.  A reoccurring motif is that of a singular entity within a vast exterior or confined to a relatively claustrophobic interior.  I am also strongly influenced by literature, music and the transportive nature of narrative genre filmmaking, as well as the way memory, desire and belief affect the psyche and the reality that one creates.

My short films tend to embody one of three narrative structures.   The first is a linear narrative.  Each scene logically connects to what has come before it; one action connects to the next, usually with a forward progression of time.  The second structure is attuned to dream-logic.  There also exists a high degree of sequentially, but characters, physical spaces and time are abstracted.  Hidden conceptual forces dictate and propel the narrative. The third structure is simply montage, consisting of numerous separate images linked to create a mood.  It is often the least straightforward in terms of coherent narrative logic.  In a poetic sense, it embodies a stanza or vignette, a brief meditation on a longer narrative, which I have often explored through another structure. As previously stated, within all these structures it is important to me that the work contains charged expressionistic elements, symbolic interpretations, as well as personal layer of meaning.  Art is the only language we have that can attempt to embody abstract thought, feeling and experience that cannot be easily explained, rationalized or quantified.