My artwork examines resilience, regeneration, and the artist’s ability to face and conquer debilitating pain. Drawing inspiration from personal challenges including two major reconstructive shoulder surgeries, I create abstract compositions that address the restorative power of artistic will. Due to the physically limiting pain of surgery, as well as the oppressive power of despair, my work has become a metaphor for the many forms of artistic repression in the world, while also acknowledging the liberation that is felt when art and artist overcome that repression. In my work, the themes of pain, struggle and revival are reflected in the physicality of the artistic process itself – tension and the often fierce manipulation of color and medium.