Oil painting allows me to share my passion for wildlife and inspire a love for nature in others. I work from my own photographs from birding trips or long hikes, finding joy in telling stories about my personal experiences in the outdoors. I am particularly interested in capturing fleeting moments, fragments of time I wish to relive and preserve. Most often, the paintings are of encounters with wildlife, with concern for the colors and textures that a camera will not pick up on. I am replicating the experience of wildlife encounters: animals in motion, camouflaged with their surroundings, and the fastness of the experience as a whole. I take a lot of inspiration from time spent in remote locations, specifically the woods of northern Maine where I have always been drawn to and visit often. I find myself talking not about the specific techniques employed in the painting process, but the stories that led to their creation and where my inspirations lie. I grew up in Massachusetts, where my persistent interest in wildlife and the outdoors started at a young age. In high school, I discovered a passion for birdwatching and began to learn about and photograph birds and other wildlife regularly. Birds are a recurring motif in my paintings as they have ignited my interest in ecology and sustainability and given me some of my happiest memories in the outdoors. I am fascinated by the variety of different species living around us and how different organisms interact with their environments, and spend a lot of time in the wilderness learning about them as I gather reference material.

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