“I am a collage artist in the found-materials tradition beginning with early modernism. Collage and assemblage can express things that other art forms cannot. I have worked with this medium throughout my art career. I use it as a starting point in my hundreds of sketchbooks, as found object art pieces such as the sculpture-collage series, and as scraps of colour in my figurative ink-collages. I am deeply interested in how art emerges from emotions and experience, without it having to be based within a technical finesse or societal pressures. My major influences include Ana Mendieta, for whom I served as an artist’s assistant, Kurt Schwitters for his bold use of found materials, and Joseph Cornell for his boxes filled with poetic combinations of objects and imagery.”