I create fictional images that serve as a platform to explore my emotional experiences. Sensations of destitution, melancholy, lust, optimism, queer desire, and the euphoric have all been used as a jumping-off point to make a picture. Taking formal cues from the history of Western painting, I use light and color to emote and dramatize an image. I understand color as an element of artifice within representational painting, and approach it with a camp sensibility to explore its potential to invoke a sense of atmosphere, time of day, the theatrical, and the spiritual. Working exclusively with the male figure, I am interested in depicting men as vulnerable rather than heroic, subverting art-historical norms through a queer point of view. Ultimately, I employ the dreamy space of painting to create an empathetic experience.