The subjects that I address as an artist explore the interdependence of personal identity, memory, and human relationships. As a painter, I represent figures ensnared in environments of uneasiness and flux. Partially or fully concealing the identity of the subject alters the viewer’s traditional expectation of intimate access to the represented individual through the relationship to the face. The individuals in my paintings become involved in a relationship between the viewer and the material environment of the painting, either evolving toward empowerment and complete personhood or toward a decentralization into no more than a crafted object deprived of identity only useful for a viewer's passing gaze. I hope to show the personal struggle of the realization of the self and evolution toward a complete identity.