I believe one of the first places we learn to define our selves and our worlds is in stories, those from books and those we are told by our families and our society. In my paintings I create characters in symbolic environments to explore our relationship with those narrative worlds. In my print series, Primer, I deal with narrative more literally, layering text from nursery rhymes and contemporary news articles to reveal common themes and questions running through these two very disparate forms of storytelling. And in my conceptual and public art project, Fear Not, I explore the impact stories have on our perception of risk.