Statement
As an artist, I am constantly inspired by the world around me and the ways in which people interact with their environments. My early work, mostly oil paintings, focused on simple things – landscapes, the human figure, still-lifes and dogs. In 2020, a time of extreme political rancor and COVID-19, I started painting maps of American cities to explore the ways that geography affects economic opportunity and mobility. My work uses the Census Bureau's Opportunity Atlas project, a powerful tool that tracks outcomes in adulthood and relates them back to the neighborhoods where children grew up, as a source of information and inspiration. Ultimately, my hope is that my art will inspire viewers to consider the complex and often-invisible forces that shape economic opportunity in our society, and to think about what can be done to create more equitable and inclusive communities.