In my youth I was not much into playing pretend, felt uncomfortable trying to be someone else. A sense of reality was very important to me. There was a lot of uncertainty in my childhood and sometimes I didn’t know what was real. Tromp-l’oeil draws me because of this real/not real tension. I take very real objects that are familiar, literal, sometimes nostalgic, and use them to tell stories. It is the actual object and their context that covey the specific message. You as a viewer must question for a moment, what is real, and then interpret using your own experiences as to the meaning and creating your own story. The objects chosen become metaphorical for what is happening personally in my life and what I see happening in my environment. Relating current events and the human experience.