As a child, people would ask me, "Do you want to be an artist when you grow up?” But I was already an artist, I was always an artist.

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For a long time I created traditional art. I drew, I painted, I sculpted, I explored new mediums to impress myself and my peers.

 

Eventually, the demands of life outweighed the time it took to make pretty things.

 

But I never stopped being an artist.

 

Sometimes I created art with words, sometimes sculptures with sticks from the yard meticulously stacked on the trailer on the way to the dump, or interactive installations disguised as the arrangement of personal items on my white-collar office desk.

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Then, at some point, the call to create in a more intentional way became louder than anything else.

 

I've found it's a kind of prayer.  The process of creating is important to me, maybe, because every brushstroke documents a thoughtful decision, a moment in time, a reflective moment of supplication.

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My art's meaning to me does not need to be the same as its meaning to you, or absence of meaning.​

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I’m endlessly and continuously grateful for the people who made sure I always had a sketchbook, who constantly asked to see what I was making, who gave me opportunities to create things in my own way, and especially the people who made me color strictly inside the lines.

 

They each gave me something important.

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(self portrait at 18, 2017
acrylic on raw canvas over salvaged stretchers)