A shift in 2017 when I moved to Newton, MA, and began studying at The New Arts Center. I benefited from the chaos of John Murray’s classroom after years of working in classes that focused on representation. His words punched: "You have to make an assault on painting every time you paint!...."You have to dig to find the content and then get slapped in the face by the plasticity!..."You are working on the plane of the impossible!... "I don't believe in identity; so i don't want that in there."

But it was Zhanna Cantor’s steadfast mentorship over five years where I honed this attitude and began to find a voice. She encouraged my desire to experiment, to work intuitively, to paint over old paintings, allowing the old to influence the new. I wanted to dig in more.