I use expressive gesture at the start of my paintings to find a composition and abstract shapes that feel natural to me, and are visually strong. Having this foundation I can make changes to the design, line, and color as I go. Each painting in this series shows those changes I have made in the areas of thick and reworked paint throughout each of them. This shows a history as well as the thought process I went through to come to the final image.

I like to have a poetic theme or series of themes as a framework going along with the abstract improvisational nature of my paintings. When I started with these paintings they were going to be about my own past. While still in the beginning stages of this series my mother became sick with cancer and I changed the focus of my work to being about my mother and my relationship. I used the paintings to deal with her illness and found inspiration from her in the end. When my mother passed away I stopped working on the paintings, as I knew they were finished for me at that point.