My work usually begins with somewhat oblique references, perhaps to a visual stimulus, or an emotional cue where I might look for a way to let that idea or emotion take visual form. 

Most of the time I work by responding to the chosen media - oil, collage, drawing media, wax or assemblage - by layering, scrubbing away, layering again and again, embedding images and references until the final piece usually retains many fragments of earlier stages of the work. Almost every piece has undergone many stages. I enjoy starting with a specific imagery or figurative idea, and then begin dissolving elements, changing the image until the piece often becomes more about the process than about the original image.

A certain amount of ambiguity is an important part of the process to me, an approach to opening doors. Most of the time, I try to avoid being too attached to a preconceived idea, and let each piece evolve and formulate itself as involvement with process and materials takes place.