I make my work out of a desire for steadfast rationality and understanding, to dialectically establish truth guided by reasoned argument, yet I am constantly undermined by irrational emotions and desires, forever at war with myself, one force driving for strength and objectivity and the other yearning to pursue images of flesh clothed in pleasure and excitement. My desire to paint stems from a desire to objectively control the images that cause this chaos. I find the most disruptive images to be photographs. My mind is over-saturated by media and digital culture, fragmented with the images and scenes of people left hollow and unreal in my head. This burden continues on to breakdown my reason and fragment the memories and mental realities of people I see and know. Having questioning my fixation with photographs I realized I am less impressed upon by the photographic representation of a figure and more by the impartial view of the lens and its infinite power to cut through any situation or identity, cropping out unnecessary or overpowering elements. This cropping is where the humanity is either lost or maintained. Figures can be controlled and reduced to abstract forms; forms that resonate with memories to create an almost nostalgic feeling of loss, desire, and a need for perfection, something I had first felt while viewing the paintings of Agnes Martin or Mondrian. As I realized the representation of the figure was no longer paramount to me, I have begun to question the purpose of observation and representational painting, as painting for conventional purposes is no longer indispensable, I have come to realize through elements such as the photographic crop, that I pursue rendering as another form of rational control. The act of rendering is isolating by nature, as you must focus solely on what you are doing, which takes you away from what is around you, even what you are feeling in your head, and that is a large part of the feeling of loss and need for perfection in my work. the more an image is cut apart, reconstructed, and rendered, the further the piece becomes from the original chaos that drove me to paint, the painting now takes over the fragmented memories of the emotion, each piece become its own entity of structure, composition, and formalism, holding at bay the narrative and personal, juxtaposing them with the abstract. these painting are a story of controlled desire, and manifestation of rational thought.