In my current series, Containers, I explore ideas of human migration and how history and invention have played roles in shaping those events. At times, migration is voluntary and at other times it is forced upon us by events such as war, catastrophe, and ethnic cleansing. The imagery that I incorporate for these paintings comes from an underlying interest in world history, inventions of man and how these end products have played a role in the desire or need to move and migrate. The series depicts images of crates, boxes, luggage, and other enclosures. The subjects (inventions) I choose to recreate are often mundane objects at first glance, but they play major parts in the events being depicted in my work. The “container” is the object that holds our possessions which in turn gives clues to who we are. Because these containers are so important to humans, both functionally and personally, they are made monumental in size within my work. The scenes are meant to be perceived as probable, yet surreal, while creating a narrative of how people and objects move from one place to another. I choose crates, boxes, containers and luggage as my main subjects because they often represent or contain what is most valuable to us. Containers are what we keep our hopes and dreams in, they are what we hide things in and they are our means of holding remnants from past lives. I give significance to these objects simply by appropriating them from the past and then bringing them to life again through painting. They are monumentalized by changing the scale and the relationship to the other objects and figures in the paintings. By shifting the importance from what is obvious, to what is not, I am constructing a deeper understanding of the events taking place. For me, Containers, represents a way of resurrecting the past, as well as documenting the process through narrative events.