Artist Statement

 
​   I believe that just as all things in the human body are connected and assist each other physically and spiritually, so too does everything in the universe. I see my work as expressing spiritual emotions about this inter-connectedness. We all have physical, emotional, mental and spiritual parts to us, and I try to engage all of these elements while doing a piece of art.

    I started as and artist doing representational work of landscapes, still lives and figures that gradually changed to my abstract work, but the influence of nature remains based on my observations of nature. I believe nature’s proportions and compositions are perfect, especially when filtered through the imagination.

    Sometimes I just stand in front of the canvas or paper and look at all the colors next to me and chose what strikes me the strongest and go from there, building colors, marks, shapes and lines together. Often after doing a series of three or four I’ll stop and lay them out on the floor and study them for some days.

    There is always a little that needs to be done to resolve them but I don’t hurry or the work could get ruined.  New ideas come sometimes from just lying down and reflecting on what I want to do next. The pieces I have just done give me ideas for continuing the series or maybe starting one based on a single color I liked from one of them.

    All these ideas started when I was looking for something new I had never done before. While looking, the first thing that came to mind was a series of quick small pastel sketches on grey sand paper, done some years before that I never developed. I got larger pastel sandpaper with the grey background and am now converting those to larger oils on canvas.

    In order to develop my techniques I’ve studied up close the surfaces of works of art by great masters, and learned how to incorporate these techniques into my own. I then push beyond these techniques by building on them.