Growing up in the Pacific Northwest has shaped my identity. The diversity and beauty of the place and the dangers that confront it are primary influences on my work. I was fortunate to grow up in a family that valued the arts as an integral part of life. Although I appreciated the arts from a young age, it was not until my early twenties that I decided to make an attempt at creating. The process began while living in Washington DC and spending time with the artistic treasures of the National Gallery of Art. During that time I attended the Corcoran School of Art studying drawing and painting with Hayes Friedman. I credit Ms. Friedman with presenting a rigorous, straightforward, and honest approach that continues to guide me. While I showed no great ability in those first classes I found the process so challenging and interesting that I developed a compulsion to learn more.
My goal in art and in painting is to understand more today than yesterday. I’m anachronistic in that I love drawing and painting. These mediums require immediacy, patience, and experience and influence my approach to conveying an intellectual message. My work is somewhere between abstraction and representational art. There are times when literal description is important to my aims and times when brushstrokes and color suffice. Both ways of working complement the other and I see little need to be solely one or the other.
Being a student of history is important to my ideas about what art is, and there is no better way to learn about painting than to look at the most potent examples from all eras. The great works don’t reveal all their secrets, but there is still much to learn. Every work of art is a product of the age in which it was created. Within this definition there are many possible approaches: as a continuation of current trends, as an imitation of past canons, as a reaction to events, as critique or protest, and as innovation. My art is indebted to the past, but I use it more as a teaching tool than as a revival of some canon or right way to work.
Making art often presents more questions than answers. During the impasses that occur I keep in mind that if there is a way into a conundrum there is also a way out, and that way is usually found in the process of making the work.