Darkness is the condition from which we all come. It is the matrix of infinite form and possibility from which light picks and chooses the objects it illuminates and brings into existence. In my art, I have discovered parallels between this interplay of darkness and light, and the interplay of black ink and white paper. The subjects of my current body of work may be the Louisiana animals and vegetation which surround me (both of which have fascinated me since I was a child growing up amongst sugar cane farmers in and around the exotic environs of Avery Island). The content of my work, however, speaks to the effects that darkness and light have on these things; the ways that they conceal and expose or flatten and expand. Manipulating these different facets of darkness and light, I adjust the value of the foreground, middle ground, and background of the image in order to thwart expected visual outcomes. In this way, positive and negative spaces collapse or become interchangeable.