Statement

I come from an artistic family: artistic parents, artistic relatives, artistic friends of the family and an artistic home town.  My father Gerald Purdy, a narrative painter, piqued my interest in using painting technique to tell visual stories.  My mother, Martha Estus, an established realist painter and printmaker, has delicately and consistently shaped my concerns for the details of composition and subject matter. To her I owe my use of nature and landscape imagery. Influenced by my parents, in my art I grapple with personal history, creating images to understand how all of my inner parts work.  I use color and lighting, symbolic objects, figures and the landscape, blending surrealism and representation to tell stories.  The narratives I present illustrate my opinions, feelings, fantasy worlds and ideals.