As an artist, one of the challenges I face is to be true to my instincts and my notion of what beauty is. One of the greatest influences on this notion of beauty is a sense of otherness, of being different. I find beauty in strange moments and strange places and try to communicate those things through my work. In the past three years, this has been the focus of my work in both painting and photography.

In my abstract landscape series and my newer work, I examine what beauty is to me in relation to my ­environment and the offerings of contemporary art. The newer work, in particular, has required that I trust my instincts about color and line and technique even if they seem counter to prevailing trends. It has meant that I accept the flaws in a piece and the juxtaposition of color, for example, hoping that it resonates with the audience.

In a similar way, my photographic work challenges the notion of what a good image is. In the series called “adrift on the signal,” I examine beauty and the human experience through a distorted lens, hoping to capture the random, nonlinear nature of time and memory. This series came about as a result of conversations with numerous friends who were beginning to deal with the deteriorating ­condition of their parents’ minds. In it, I had to ask myself what those distorted mental ­images looked like and whether they were as valuable as the clear, unobstructed images of youth.