Artist Statement

When I began painting at age seventeen, I had no formal training behind me, and did not know exactly how or where to begin.   Rather than flip through the phone book looking for someone who gave art lessons for a fee, I began attending local art shows to better familiarize myself with what was being done in my area of the country.   From there I was able to get in touch with several local artists whose work I had seen at these shows.   These artists then began teaching me their techniques, whether it was gouache and powdered pigments on paper, or acrylic and latex on canvas.  

I then took what I had learned from these artists, in particularly their “rules” of art, and started applying it to my own work.   I would often bend or completely break some of these “rules” while experimenting with various styles and other media.   Now I have developed my own style of approaching my creativity whereby I do not paint exactly what I see, but rather paint how the things I see and the emotions I experience make me feel.