About The Artist

​​​Art for me has always evoked the dynamics of personality beginning with my portraits for thirty years where I found myself reaching out to people through my paintings. I consider my INFJ typology and my years of wilderness isolation to be my primary inspiration for my portraits. Finally now I have returned to where I began with wildlife art as an eleven year old. I have predominantly returned to my earliest form of portraiture with animals, where I so often bring their saturated attitudes bathed in various illuminations of light and natural color. Addicted to the living vibes of creation through windows of the soul, I translate their emotional effect onto canvas. I almost feel my subjects are alive and need to step back making way for them feeling the impact of their mood seemingly in motion...painted spirits seem to talk into the wee hours of the morning. I am known for using oils as thin as watercolor and watercolor as thick as oil without apology. I mix my mediums as many would never venture but not unlike some masters I have come to know. My first portrait commission was at eighteen though I never desired to pursue a career in the arts early on believing the quality and focus on my work would only suffer. Though I was confident in my creations I took very few commissions in my earlier years and turned away as many. I also never liked deadlines with my arts. I would have loathed art school. I was contently self taught my whole life until finally I wisely convinced myself to take lessons under a world renowned photorealist who I unexpectedly met in my fiftieth year. Fantastic decision. I have always believed 'the need to gravitate to those who are stronger than us in a field of interest' is the key to improving which I am quietly obsessed with. As the wisest masters will say, including my friend Andrew, we always remain art students in degrees to the day we die. There are no masters in reality, we only think there are and believing that keeps us on our toes as we reach for that imagined level of wisdom. As I likewise started saying in my twenties, "Realism is a challenge that proves God's perfection we can never quite measure unto. Our desire for perfection provokes endless aspirations that produce ever growing humility."