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 hen I first transferred to Otis College of Art and Design, I entered a new way of thinking about art.  Before, my art training at the several colleges and universities was very academic: drawing and painting from live models, numerous exercises on the fundamentals of drawing and painting theories, etc. Entering Otis as Sophomore was the beginning of the work that I create today. One of [my early] assignments [required I] create a painting in three weeks. This was the beginning of my obsession with Barbie dolls, and almost every painting done at Otis involved the Barbies... my teachers always encouraged me to develop this theme.
We might live at a time where 'it's all been done or said and everything is a cliché.' Still, these dolls have not been painted in the way that I see them. I never wanted to portray the Barbie-stereotype image that other artists always seem to see. I find Barbie as "Icon" or "Saint" or [her] unreal-female physical representation boring, although there is some truth, [which] has been presented and covered extensively in art through the 1980s and 1990s.
 My interest is in the dolls themselves. I have the intimate memory of playing with them and so I have an emotional attachment. I love these dolls and the fun play that is associated with childhood. I see them for what they truly are: people living with us in a parallel, miniature universe. They live along side us.
My creative process is intuitive and sub-conscious. I work with the objects first. The object sparks the Idea. Intuition is a much more honest _expression of art because it comes from the soul and the uncensored part of the mind. It is really an unfiltered truth, like a child's world of innocence and beauty instead of an adult's world of careful, edited and phony rearranging of the truth. And yet, the trick is balancing these two thought processes for turning the idea into the ideal.
I often picture the painting in my mind before I do it. The most unlikely pairings of objects is the most exciting and powerful. I have started using food with the dolls in my still-lives, and am excited with this concept.
The paintings take two months to a year to complete depending on size and details. I work layer upon layer, scrutinizing every section to match colors and values as exacting as my judgement is capable.
I work much like the photorealist painters. The process is rather intense. I set up my dolls in a still-life and photograph them under very bright spotlights, or natural sunlight, arranging the dolls and accessories in the most exciting and interesting way. After milling through thirty to sixty slides, I finally narrow down to the best candidates for the painting and begin the formidable task of drawing it out on canvas and begin the painting process...
There is a tension between the viewer and the painting, because I paint the dolls on our scale, creating a confrontation: the doll wants to be human and humans want to be dolls. This is the allure and magnetism the doll radiates: forever young, immortal not mortal, frozen in time, alive but lifeless...
...My philosophy [is that] our society is too focused on what to eat and what to wear. We are caught up in things that don't really matter in the end… We tend to see only the surface; the outer shell of people and things and have a difficult time seeing the inside, the truth. And our constant fascination with the possibility of immortality. Why are we mortal? Can we learn how to extend life, defy gravity, regenerate cells, program genes for perfection?
I like my work to be childlike, beautiful, fun, quirky, original and reflect today!
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