Analysis of my own obsessive compulsive behaviors was the catalyst that launched my investigation into the psychological relationships between our minds and the objects in the world around us.
Over the last five years, I have researched mental health, hoarding disorder and OCD, and gone into the homes of people affected by these conditions. The knowledge gained through my interviews and the thousands of photographs I take while in their homes, have become integral parts of my process. By creating artworks based on these spaces, I have come to perceive our physical surroundings as a manifestation of the psyche. My paintings are more than representations of people’s possessions, they are portraits of their minds.
I have created several bodies of work based on these concepts and title my works with the names of the individuals whose homes I have visited. My Hoard series is based on my visits with those affected by hoarding disorder. Although these paintings are depictions of real environments, I stylistically transform these chaotic scenes into formal and orderly still-lifes. My OCD and OCD Installation Series both explore compulsions in pursuit of perfect order and represent the idealized state sought after by the minds of those affected by organizational OCD.
I embrace my organizational OCD and seek perfection in my studio and home. Although I strive to recreate the picture in my mind, it is never attainable. But in art it is. I can achieve a desired state of order not attainable in real life. Are my works fictions, no, they are reality. but better..
My goal with this work is to actuate a visual language which represents the workings of the human mind. Although my paintings engage with aspects of realism, abstraction, and minimalism, the mental processes I depict require me to seek out a different set of visual archetypes. Blurring the lines between these genres, my work explores and makes visible the relationships between physical reality and the psyche.