I create work because I am compelled to make order in an entropic universe, to understand my personal history and history in a larger context to find meaning in the present. I want to share these "expressions" with others and to generate conversations about how their experiences and mine align and how they differ. I continuously strive to abandon internal controls that do not serve me in life or as an artist. I struggle with everyday life experiences and work to give voice to my challenges in my painting. These efforts and my appreciation of blessings shape my vision. From the start, I have represented my inner world as a three-dimensional realm—sometimes an interior with a window view or a mirror reflecting an imaginary place or people gathering or a person, a portrait. However, the painting is a unified, impenetrable surface of flat shapes (a puzzle), and I want viewers to see/understand this dimension as well. A painting, like life, is a paradox. I manipulate these "opposing" dimensions and ideas to create work that has dynamic unity. Sunflower stems overlap to form an X-shape, a table seemingly reflected in a mirror transforms to a table inside and outside the mirror and the mirror frame to a simple, rectangular contour. Often, the viewer doesn’t see these individual manipulations, but if successful, they stimulate a more sustained and imaginative reflection and a feeling of looking at something of life, something that changes from one thing to another and then another.