I’ve lived in a construction zone for over four years, observing and photographing the stakes, flags, cones, and excavations that accompany this activity. I’m fascinated by the hot pink and orange markers and tolerant of the mess, which for me has a strangely compelling beauty. This changing landscape has revealed to me that destruction is an inherent part of building, just as the dual forces of construction and destruction are a part of life in general—and the creative process in particular.

For years I’ve cut up paintings for collages. Now, through the use of a camera and computer, I’m able to do this with abandon, knowing that I have a usable record of the original. I use painting, photography and digital media, by themselves or mixed, to produce any given image. I enjoy embedding actual and digital fragments from older works into newer ones, creating continuity where there are no obvious connections. Paintings that no longer exist take on a new life, and in this sense destruction hardly seems possible. Likewise, I've come to see that the notion of original work is nebulous and pliable.

The images and media I use overlap and dissolve. In the process, so do distinctions between what builds and what breaks down. Just as processes and mediums bend to take on other identities, so, too, do ideas about what is lost and what remains in a piece of art or our own lives. Fragments resurface like memories, merging to form something new and unexpected.