How did you get into painting? How has your work continued to evolve?
At Massachusetts College of Art and Design, I started off investigating the basics – still lives and portraits. My professor Chris Chippendale directed our class with specific painting exercises that helped us translate what we saw into paint. The following year we were given a studio but, were no longer given structured assignments. I had no idea what to paint without the teacher’s direction. So, I turned to my sketchbooks and found trends revolving around the passage of time and memory. Eventually I turned to abstraction, using it as a format to preserve intangible moments from my past. I found I could express the essence of a memory with color and started exploring ways of laying these colors on a surface.
What are some of the biggest influences on your art?
Color geniuses such as Josef Albers, Mark Rothko, Richard Diebenkorn. Some of the Surrealist thoughts and wildboy compositions of Miró and Hans Arp. Duane Michals and Christian Marclay’s exploration of time, memory, and storytelling. Lately, my holy grail is physicist Carlo Rovelli’s book called “The Order of Time”.
Can you explain the concept of synesthesia? When did you first realize your gift?
Synesthesia is defined as when stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. Synesthesia can present in a variety of forms, in my case I visualize thoughts and feelings as specific colors. These can include music, numbers, and the essence of people and places.
I attended The Vermont Studio Center in 2012 and began a series of paintings inspired by the 100 or so artists that I met during my month stay at the residency. I painted the colors that came to mind when I interacted with them and beneath the colors wrote a small anecdote about them. Upon seeing this series, a visiting artist asked if I had synesthesia. That was the first I had heard of it.