Imagination playfully cavorts with authenticity when fabricating what we think of as memories. It is at this intersection, between the poles of fiction and truth, that my paintings are situated. I choose old family photographs as the basis for my work, from which I create entirely new realities. By recontextualizing figures and objects or dramatically restaging the action of a photo, I obscure the divisions between the materiality of the moment depicted in the photograph, the memories of that moment, and the possibilities of reality.

Issues of contrast, specifically of finding harmony between dissonant elements, have been a constant theme in my work. Here, there is an interplay of tones, as humor flits around anger, solemnity is nudged by frivolity, and absurdity pokes at earnestness. This is akin to the gauzy, inchoate, often chaotic nature of memory.