ARTIST STATEMENT: My work explores the intimacy of small scale and the silence of still life objects; their stillness makes room for deep reflection. At this small scale, every painting is a distillation of the subject’s character and unique identity. The painting process answer my need to connect with the divine and my desire for tranquility. Reducing the size of a work to 3x4 inches comes as a natural response to my meditation practice. Meditation encourages a one-pointed focus and the scale I use requires this same disciplined concentration. It’s not just seeing with the physical eyes; my goal each time is to become the 'seeing.' As I continue my search for an object’s essence and the way that light affects not just it and its colors but the air that surrounds it, I’ve started to limit my compositions to a single fruit or vegetable with an emphasis on simplicity, transparency and color relationships.