“I title all my work after songs — rock, pop, folk, classical — as a way of grounding abstraction in shared cultural memory. "Love Can Make You Happy" is a 1969 pop song, simple and earnest. But the piece itself was inspired by the figurative abstractions of Arshile Gorky, one of the mid-century painters I return to most. Working in the tradition of the Pacific Northwest Mystics alongside Gorky, de Kooning, and Hofmann, I believe art should do more than please — it should evoke connotations that permit the viewer to experience a sense of wonder, awe, and new perspectives of being. This piece leaves that imprint: a figure half-emerging from layered ground, caught between the lyrical simplicity of a pop song and the psychological depth of mid-century abstraction.”