The lives of ordinary people are extraordinary. Each and every day people engage in incremental heroics, tragedy, valiance and exhilaration. These are real life experiences that go unnoticed. So I try to notice them by peering into them with questions. This is what my work is fundamentally about. I believe it is our human emotion, compassion and empathy that softens us long enough to see beyond the immediate. So each act of human emotion and empathetic understanding is building a way out of our limited thinking, moving us past our smaller selves for a moment and opening up a larger well that has no boundaries. For me, this is the role art plays. It lays the groundwork to finding a sustainable human existence, internally and externally. So each piece begins by contemplating this inner world…of myself, of people in the streets, of my audience. These are real things for me, so I begin with them.