This body of work is composed of portraits of strangers based on found images from many different sources. I staple linen to the studio walls and then stretch it. Not allowing the painting to be an object until I am ready allows me to experiment more freely. I often bring a painting toward a logical conclusion stylistically, then deliberately break it to create something new and unexpected. All the themes I’ve been working on—portraiture, narrative, the language of costume—become like meat falling off the bone after it’s been roasting for a long time, no longer recognizable in its former incarnation, but far more succulent. Folds and patterns become a vehicle for abstraction. The figure no longer serves the purpose of telling a story. It’s a shape, a part of the painting.