I reference my large collection of Mexican and Guatemalan folk art – masks, carved wooden animals, papier mâché figures, and toys – to create one-of-a-kind pastel on sandpaper paintings and limited-edition photographs. My work combines reality and fantasy to depict dreamlike personal narratives.

The Black Paintings series of pastel-on-sandpaper paintings grew directly from an earlier series, Domestic Threats.

Both series use cultural objects as surrogates for human beings acting in mysterious, highly-charged narratives.

In the Black Paintings the figures (actors) now take central stage. All background details, furniture, rugs, etc. are eliminated and are replaced by intense dark black pastel.

Begun in 2007 this is my most personal body of work to date. The black background symbolizes death and emptiness as the actors are emerging from a deeply painful state. Although the Black Paintings series was created out of profound pain, each image manifests irrepressible optimism.