My idea is that explicit narratives tend to overshadow intuition, gut feelings and the profound experience of mystery and joy that a painting has the potential to provide. My forms and marks, with their apparent weight, particular vitality, and inertia live in an environment I try to render luminous and transparent. I inscribe, blot, stroke, scrape and drip. The primary focus is to convey rhythm and cadence through color, line, and forms. As such, they are purely expressive or lyrical, with no other intended narration. My paintings are there for viewers to run their mind free. My most recent paintings are moving toward a desire for increased openness, letting color and space within the piece play a more prominent role in achieving a balanced and lively visual environment, where forms, lines and marks coexist. My focus is on the complex relationship between forms, marks, color and depth; how they interact to form and balance the painting. The encaustic medium involves a lot of scraping through multiple layers of wax. The final product is what remains, getting to the essence of the piece.