While studying art in Russia in 2003, I experienced a paradigm shift from physical to emotional painting. I stood in front of paintings that I’d never seen before. Since I had no intellectual data for these paintings, I wasn’t able to analyze them from the thinking part of my brain. Instead for the first time, I read the paintings by feeling them. This planted a small seed inside me which changed the whole way I now go about creating art. Having completed my MFA at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco in 2007, I have settled in a tiny enclave at the southern base of California’s wine country, where I currently work.

When I first start a body of work in a series, often I don’t know what it’s going to look like until I am several paintings into it. Each painting is like a sonnet. Within all my work my influences are spiritual. For example, with my "Landscapes of the Soul" series I have created a landscape that holds an emotion that is timeless. This is based on my feeling that we create our environment based on our emotions or our vibrational signature. The figures in these paintings appear to be in a timeless void, inspired by the Buddhist concept of no beginning and no end. I’m searching for a special moment so that the viewer isn’t identifying with a certain individual, but a vibration or a single feeling.

Color is large part of the energy of my paintings. I love to control the palette, so all my work deals with strong color. I think about the emotion I’m trying to convey and what types of things I can do to best display that emotion on a 2-D format. When I pose and photograph my models, I always focus on how I will convey emotion. The model is always my muse. I use the photos as a guide, but move away from them as the painting develops.

The emotional concept of not being able to control a situation is all part of my painting process, so I often let washes just run down the canvas. I work with the idea of motion or energy, usually starting with the least moving elements first, then moving to the ones with the most movement last. I describe light in my paintings through a strong color and value theme, building layers to create depth and mood. When painting, I often explode with energy all over my studio. It’s like being an orchestra conductor of energy and movement.