Photo-based realisms were created in order for a return to illusionism after an era that believed that abstraction was the only possibility for relevant art. Photorealism was considered a valid art form, but not because of its tendancy for illusionism. It was validated as a form of Conceptualism that was based on the process of recreating the photograph through the use of a grid. The grid encouraged painters to paint each increment of the painting separately and objectively. The illusion of the realist image was paradoxical in that the photorealist image was just an orderly arrangement of abstract paintings. Furthermore, it ignored the fact that the paintings were records of the process of recreating the photograph through the use of a grid. The illusion simply took away from the concept. In my painting, I systematically rearrange the order or the placement of each increment of the grid according to a number system. This creates a square-by-square map of the process of recreating a photograph. The photograpic image as a whole is still hinted at, yet the painting becomes an intricate system of mark-making that is a more conceptually pure form of Photorealism.

 The use of pattern in my paintings is to take the rearranged, rotated, or reordered grid increment and divest it of photographic reference. I paint instead shape and color so that parts of the image reference pure abstraction, which allows the viewer to not only focus on the process of my having painted the image, but also it presents more clearly the way shape and color interact with underlying number systems and their relation to the grid. Having flat color placed beside photographic information emphasizes its flatness so that it isn't illusionistic, but it belongs to a language of signs. The language of signs consists of words, and any graphic information that can translate onto a two dimensional surface. Trying not to recreate a photograph, I use this language in creating an environment, or a painting that exists in space. Emphasis on the third dimension negates photographic reproducability, which separates the photograph from my painting.

 Although the painting can still be read as a whole, each increment I paint is meant to be read as an individual record of the process of its creation. Therefore, the act of reading a painting involves the viewer's time and is a situation in itself. I sometimes incorporate mirrors into my work to emphasize this situation. As the viewer walks by a mirror, they are constantly recreating my painting by adjusting the angle from which they are looking at the mirror and its reflection. Incorporating the reflection of the viewer and the room into a painting includes the viewer as a participant in determining how the work will look within the space it occupies. Time, place, and even structure important in making my painting about the photograph, as opposed to actually being a photographic. My paintings are real objects that depict unreality in life and Art.

 However distorted, the subject matter of my paintings is portraits of people that I know. Even though the portrait is usually distorted to the point that subject is unrecognizable, it is still an object of elevated status, and something people want to be a part of. The name of the sitter and the process of distortion are described in the title as a way of giving identity to the painting so that it isn't completely objective-oriented. Through shape, arrangement, color, media and structure I comment further on my perception of the identity of the subject. The physical identity of my subject is less important to me than an assosiative identity that comes from the relation of different ideas about that person.