I started painting flowers and plants because I was intrigued by their beauty and complexity. I wanted to create a uniquely personal world for them, a world that reflected my aesthetic and personal sensibilities, and also conveyed the wonder I feel in creating it. While my inspiration is from the natural world, I definitely don’t feel a faithful slave to it. I take liberties with the shapes and configurations to best serve the composition, and the backgrounds and colors are purely from my imagination.

My methods and materials reflect my affinity for draftsmanship and the graphic arts. I choose to depict the forms with just lines, without color, because I’m interested in their shapes, first and foremost. I enjoy the challenge of describing volume and dimension with just lines, and I find a lot of inspiration in manga (Japanese comic books) and European fin de siècle (late 19th century) posters. They not only provide examples of masterful uses of line, but also wonderfully balanced and harmonious compositions. Beauty, balance, and harmony—those are all qualities that are readily found in natural forms, and I seek to represent them in my work. I want to evoke all the wondrous feelings that nature can inspire in us, and make them resonate.