Through painting I attempt to navigate concepts of mapping both known and unknown territories. Themes like above/below, matter/spirit, light/dark, fragmentation/connection, unravel/contain all create a context for my canvases. Similar to the way maps navigate geographic destinations, I use the pictorial language of line, gesture, and color to lead the viewer to ‘sites’ that are familiar and unknown, personal and universal. In my work, line functions as a ‘mapping’ structure for place, it indexes travel, journey and movement. Line appears either as a hand-drawn tangle and cluster; in contrast with a geometric, straight-edged taped line. Repeatedly, my paintings layer paint, tape, line and plaster in order to create a surface that excavates and digs back into those layers, creating a back and forth rhythm, similar to the cadence of walking a long trek. At certain stages in the painting I may plaster the surface. The plaster functions both like a ‘skin’, and a layer that conceals. For me, painting is a full body event. Significantly, the meaning of my work is intimately connected to the performative nature of my process, a process where my whole body is engaged in the act of painting. Painting has a malleable ability to absorb so much of what is going on, especially right now. My paintings navigate the nexus between light and dark, between the human spirit and its capacity to transform and to endure, ultimately to embrace both beauty and terror.