My paintings are colorful, textural, and abstract landscapes, loosely based on geographical features in the Midwest, including coastal dunes, lakes and forests. I create a variety of marks with palette knives and brushes and build up a textural surface with mixtures of smaller and larger marks and directionality, which gives the pieces a sense of movement. This creates a tension in the interplay of abstract and representational aspects of my work. In the end, I emphasize an expressive and imaginative approach, as color and gesture dance together to suggest form and meaning.