My recent practice comprises painting, drawing, and ceramics. I paint from observation of handmade scenes constructed from clay, plastics, and various ubiquitous commercial materials. Each work is a translation of the model’s surface and shares a likeness to its subject while bearing its own agency. This process, both depiction and invention, requires many hours of looking, and I am interested in the mutable exchanges that take place between me, the object, and the painting over time. I want the figures in the work to hum with a flamboyant glow, hopefully mirroring the viewer’s experience of looking. The goal is for the paintings to offer a range of readings at the same time: illusion with decoration, armor with vulnerability, muteness with liveliness, and autonomy with the evaporation of the self.