Tangible, familiar elements and bright, playful colors invite viewers into deceptively subversive images. The situations portrayed in my pieces have components deliberately placed to add levity and humor while lurking beneath is a dire event. Significant, societal issues-as experienced within the framework of American suburban culture-inspire the narratives of my painting.

Humor, levity and irony are facades, their incorporation a masking mechanism. The golden hammers and Viking helmets are a means of social critique; both blue jeans and costume clothing depict assumed identities.

Whether in denial, avoidance, or an attempt to cope, people will deliberately don clothing and adopt behavior to become someone else. The collision of the actual self with the assumed self is often uncomfortable, jarring and violent. This showdown of actual person versus surface identity is cyclical and socially significant. It has manifested itself in the boom of the video gaming industry, the uprising of virtual worlds, the disparate expectations for gender roles, the definition of success, and the significant lack, misdirection, or excess of reaction to events taking place in the world around us.