My work documents the special, unspoken moments of everyday life we remember and investigates the intimate relationships that shape the self’s perception of reality. I engage with the tension between seeing and being seen, between being perceived and being known. In my oil paintings, I depict a person or persons in the act of existing and being perceived through another person’s eyes. For reference, I use photographs I take of people in my life and zero in on that moment to pull out a feeling. The figure(s) is the most important part, and the background exists to point to and hold the person within it while simulating the sensory experience of being in a dream or memory. The memory of the informal moment I’m documenting becomes important when given the care of an official portrait. I  blur the line between memory and relationships through a muted color palette and differentiate subjects through a highly rendered hand contrasted with a painterly style. I seek to capture the sensory experience of life in its most natural and present these moments to the viewer as extraordinary.