Inspired by the English Pre-Raphaelites and the writings of late Victorian Kentucky poets Madison J. Cawein and Robert Burns Wilson, my paintings are of the eternal human quest for love set in a lost Gothic world inhabited primarily by women who are caught in the contradictions of their dreams and how they have found their world to actually be.
Many of the inhabitants are haunted, but not by supernatural forces. When ghosts appear, they are not always the spirits of lost loved ones, more often, they are the ghosts of an idea or dream-for example, the idea that one can find a lifelong and true love or of that one person who simply cannot be forgotten. The women who spread their wings are not angels in the expected sense; their wings are a manifestation of the forces that shape their lives.

Men are sometimes present in my images, often in an embrace of acceptance and partnership as they share the immutable longing for love. At other times, men are found at that pivotal moment of undesired separation or are reaching out to comfort those in pain.

But not every moment is one of tragic endings.

There are moments of quiet joy, when the transformative powers of Love turn from dark to light. Memory no longer wounds, but instead gives appreciative perspective for what has been found again.

My paintings reject the cynicism, bitterness and irony readily found in a world mired in it. The images offer refuge for those who still value love and are immersed in true feelings, a place where it is safe to be emotionally vulnerable and to acknowledge the melancholy that sometimes enters all our lives....