We are made to feel our own presence in the act of seeing. My paintings begin from the point of view that the challenge of seeing the self, the world, and others relates to the difficulty of knowing the self, the world, and others. Identity and the relationship between inner and outer worlds are unstable. This instability is connected to perception.

For me, the interplay between the painted and the photographed, between the seen and the sensory experience is mysterious and fascinating. I am drawn to photograph, and then subsequently paint moments where an underlying pulse of possibility hovers at the edges of what we immediately recognize. At these liminal moments it is possible for us to become lost, transformed, or transported by the act of seeing. Painting is a way of finding my way through and communicating the indefiniteness of experience.
                                   

- Nicole Duet