"It helps me that there are so many points of view in the arts right now and that most of them are a click, turn of a page, or short walk to a gallery away. That means it's easier than ever to discover what I like and why, as well as what I don't like and why. My voice is something that's still being worked on and will continue to be worked on until I'm gone.""Art has always been a part of my life. I must have been three or four, and when my teacher instructed us to draw a tree from a picture, I panicked just looking at all the leaves wondering how I could possibly get each one. I ended up finishing the drawing and have kept drawing ever since."My undergraduate experience [at the NYU Studio Arts program] really solidified my decision to keep painting and making work. I found two great teachers and mentors in Jason Tomme and Maureen Gallace. About a year after I graduated, Maureen introduced me to Billy Sullivan, and I became his studio assistant. Working with him — and involving myself in a studio operation with someone who has always photographed, drawn, and painted for a living — taught me that I could do it myself if I really worked at it.""I've always loved paintings of flowers, so a couple years ago, I thought, Why not try to do one myself? I went to the store, bought some flowers, made some drawings, did a couple paintings, and thought they turned out well. After doing the first few, my dad came to visit me in New York. We went to Prune for dinner, and he told me he had cancer and that he was going to die. In the awful months and year that followed — from his decline, to his death, and to the healing process that I'm still going through — going to the store, buying flowers, making drawings, and making a painting became one of the only things I could do that made me feel in control. So I did it over and over again.""I get a lot of solace from looking at flowers — everyone does in a way, I think. I don't want to get too sentimental with the life and death thing involved with cut flowers and growing plants, but to ignore that as a primary reason why I've been painting flowers and plants for the past two years would be silly."