My work now does not have a single meaning or message. I work in large groups of varied languages and conversations. These days, with social media and our complicated situations, to be alive and walking around with a body, head, and heart, means we are inundated with calls to action, requests to care, to pay attention. I’d say the work is an assembly of responses to desires, confusion, and complication. I make paintings and drawings that try to notice that thread between composition, context, and culture. The symbols and images are found in my recollections, usually from signifiers of subcultures that I’ve had experiences with. The thing is, those experiences were typically half-baked attempts to join, to connect, to locate parts of myself. So, I did kind of get into skate boarding, Punk Rock, self-help, yoga, new age culture. I thought, ok, this will fix me. But it was always incomplete. I could never totally buy in. I took pieces of these experiences with me, and they became my understanding of the world and time I found myself in. I love people. I love that we try so hard to be better, to be in control, to be cool. Maybe these images are my way of saying I see you. I see you trying. I’m trying too.