I had my first official art class when I was 8 years old. It was a watercolor class and I was the only kid in the midst of older adults who were taking the same class. I will never forget taking swimming lessons at the high school and then afterwards heading over to my watercolor class. I loved the smells as you would walk through an oil painting class to get to the watercolor class room. The aroma had a mixture of oil paint, gesso, gum erasers and mineral spirits. It “smelt” like art. To this day, it sends me back to that time when I first started understanding how to look at a reference image and draw what you see, then paint it accurately. It’s funny, when I was a few years older in the fifth grade, I actually gave it a teacher of mine as gift for showing us The Empire Strikes Back in school. It may not seem like a big deal, but it was back then. She asked who did it and I said that I DID. It was one of the first paintings I ever painted when I was 8. She didn’t believe me and couldn’t believe that I was capable of making something with that much accuracy and perfect execution. But, eventually, she saw that I did indeed paint it and that I was an artist, even at age 10.
I work primarily using acrylics, but also oil paint, airbrush and watercolors. I also like to work on different surfaces including illustration board, watercolor paper or a heavily gessoed canvas that is super smooth.
I love having a plan before starting a project so it hits all of the points that I need to make it interesting.
At other times, I just dive in and let it start to create itself without any preconceived ideas, take the giant leap of faith knowing that you will land somewhere, which is akin to that way I approach my musical improvisation. I let the artwork create itself instead of forcing it to be something. The hardest part is just beginning.
I love hyper-surrealistic imagery and nature.
Here a few examples of my work:
This piece was created for a YES tribute band called Close to the YES. It was the first painting I had done in a while and what’s wild is that two months, I literally manifested the cat that I painted! It was a beautiful synchronicity that I will never forget as he is my best buddy and a Jedi cat!
These are just a few examples of my artwork. You can see even more of my work and purchase prints of my art at my ETSY storefront. There you will find a variety of pen and ink illustrations, graphite, watercolors, airbrush and mixed media pieces, along with a handful of original pieces for sale.
