I was raised in a conservative religious household, and was taught that everyone follows the same truths. When I found that my family wasn’t perfect, and that there were other realities that existed in the world, I realized that there are no absolutes. I shed my conservative and religious skin and started attempting to redefine myself. I listen to the radio every day, and I hear accounts of religious fanatics in our country, and I realize that I held many of their beliefs growing up.

As I’ve gotten older, my experiences have taught me that there are too many variables to conclude that there is any one truth. My work depicts me wrestling with the guilt that I feel over my past views, and my desire for absolution from my blindness. My art making is a direct response to this desire. I want to fully embody the notion that there are no absolutes in the human experience. Equality is key and my one remaining truth is the Golden Rule.

My work explores how my moral compass has shifted from conservative to liberal values and reflects the anxiety I feel in attempting to understand the full extent of the diversity of humanity. There is a sense of division that is created in my work that shows the disillusionment my upbringing caused and my desperate need to recognize my ability to change. My work has a tone of voyeurism in it; I examine the lives of the people around me to contrast their lives with my own and revel in their differences, or I expose myself, either through self portraiture or conceptual representation in order to evaluate my own true uninhibited self. I put myself or my subjects into costumed or staged scenarios to illustrate my own changing morals. I tell my stories with drama and conviction in the same way that the Catholic Reformation commissioned the Baroque painters Caravaggio and Carracci to paint compelling religious imagery to illustrate the bible, but I want to illustrate equality and justice.