Why do I paint?

“Art About Life”: Throughout history, great art has been about some aspect of life. 

Art can serve to remind us why we are here - what it means to be alive. It can tell the story of emotions, experiences, universal human truths. At its base, art is not the re-creation of a scene or design principles, it is about the story of life, lives, experiencing life. Humans create art and thus, art is about humanity.

My art form is intended to remind us of what it means to experience life, to touch on those universal human truths that make each of our life experiences unique, yet unite us together in their similarity.

To me, landscapes are not about the actual places, but about the emotional reaction to the scene itself. That human response to the scene can trigger memories and emotions that are unique to each person. Abstract images can also be found within the overall landscape itself– creating multiple levels of interpretation. While to me these images may mean one thing, for others it may trigger different memories or emotions. I rarely include people in my landscapes because I want to engage the viewer and have them be taken into the scene to re-create their own personal experiences.

My abstractions are driven by my attempt to interpret human interaction and the emotions which it creates. Utilizing key design elements, I attempt to depict the space of human interaction and the emotions created in that space to visually bring to life what is difficult to express in words.

The design elements I am drawn to are color, light, form, texture, and line. I utilize color to bring out the emotion of the scene, texture to bring out the roughness and reality of the world, light to provide the spark that triggers those special moments, form to remind us of the concreteness of life, and line to convey the rhythm and motion of life. My primary medium is acrylics, but I also enjoy working in watercolor, colored pencil and graphite.