The place where I am most comfortable in my drawings and paintings, is standing right on the threshold between abstraction and reality. I am interested in distilling the subjective world into color form and light and seeing how brain responds, and how the visual language of my art “reads.” I often paint recognizable shapes and forms, and sometimes very realistic images that hint at a narrative. But it is the colors, forms, and overall mark-making that call to me. There is an ebb and flow in my painting process. I begin by rapidly applying subtle color variations of paint, responding to the paint itself more than rigidly adhering to my preconceived plan. I pour translucent washes, smear thicker layers of viscose paint, scrape lines into the surface, and dab and poke at the surface with rags. When I finally pause, I realize my hands are covered with colors, my palette is a mess, rags and paper towels litter the surfaces where opened tubes and jars of paint are scattered in chaos. This is when I need to sit with the work. To be with it, live with it, to listen to what it is saying. I find the “disrupted” reality of realism mixed with abstraction offers me new ways of responding to emotions and ideas. I tip the balance between abstraction and reality back and forth as a tool to enter into a new emotional place.