I paint the body doing ordinary things: sleeping, resting, turned away, getting through the day.

My work is a study in coping. I’m interested in what a figure looks like when it has stopped arranging itself for anyone, when it’s occupied with holding itself together rather than with being seen. I want the opposite of a pose: how a body carries itself when it feels like the world is collapsing around it.

I’m drawn to the moment a posture gives something away that an expression may suppress. There’s vulnerability in that, and a fair amount of humor. Domestic life is where this happens, so that’s where I paint: beds, plain morning light, the animals and objects that share the room and don’t care whether anyone is watching.

I begin with underpainting so saturated it’s hard to look at, subduing with each layer and working from loose movement toward specific observation. My background in design shows in how the compositions carry weight.

I’m after the dignity available to a body precisely when it isn’t trying to have any.