s a perceptual, realist painter, I am committed to the tradition and rigorous practice of working only from observation. The industrial zones in Brooklyn and Queens where I paint possess characteristics which are specifically urban and uniquely American, yet they could just as likely be neighborhoods in any of the Rust Belt towns I remember from my childhood in the Midwest. My personal relationship with each place begins with something I might see that initially interests me on a formal or compositional level - the way a straight road seemingly bends elliptically in space, the expansive curve or color of a bridge, the interplay of graffiti on a corrugated metal fence - and gradually develops or changes significance with each successive visit. Eventually, the focus, subject, or very meaning of the work might shift organically through the openness of the painting process itself. By including as much information as possible, both literally and physically, I attempt to avoid the typical sentimentality common, historically, in most conventional landscape painting.