When I go to make a painting, I start with a photograph. These photographs are sketches from staged situations concentrated around people interacting. Typically these people are within couples, romantically linked, but sometimes they are individuals, sometimes friends. I photograph models and my own friends because they are wonderful stand-ins for characters that I can project easily upon. These people may be in their home, at a grocery store, in a restaurant – places of no particular surprise in everyday life. I mine from my collection of photographs until I find one that appeals to me. When I begin the painting I first make a sketch on the canvas; I know at this time what I am doing. It is with the addition of paint that the image transferring from the photograph becomes fugitive and often takes on a life of its own. There is a pull to make it realistic, to copy, and there is a pull to abstract. The photographic image, as a source from which to paint, breathes differently. The image is one piece of a moving scenario in which people were jumping around, on top of each other, under each other, feeding each other. I can see this scenario when I look at the image, so I attempt to convey that the painting is a piece of time, the story didn’t begin at that moment, and it doesn’t end at that moment. The language of how it is painted is very important to me and through the application of paint, I pay most attention to how each piece of the painting is interacting with each other. The layering of this interaction, the layering of paint, the particularity of what is painted, what is left, becomes my communication of the peoples’ interaction. In the end, with these paintings being about relationships, relationships between people and their exterior/interior world, I am exploring how much should be given away, how much should be kept, and where the balance lies between the two.