Artist Statement

I consider myself lucky to have several creative passions. There’s art direction and design where I develop solutions for clients, work with deadlines, and focus on clarity and understanding. There’s photography which is about staying curious and having a disciplined eye. As a writer, I often explore the human condition through literary fiction and poetry. And then there’s painting — expressive, colorful creations painted in my studios in the Virginia countryside.

What attracts me to painting is that it allows for endless creative possibilities — color, texture, imagery, storytelling, expression, gesture, movement. There is freedom in painting. I often work in layers, so erasures and scrapings are a part of my process as the painting progresses in an intuitive manner. I’m most interested in the creative process and artistic expression while drawing inspiration from memories, nature, music, and literature.

Painting is an ongoing engagement with images and ideas that are sometimes difficult to fully understand. Being an artist means that I carve out time and energy in order to explore and to create something from the puzzle pieces. Creative expression is a personal process, an inner dialogue. It is about making choices, taking some risk, exploring materials, and trusting your hand.

There are many ways to seek truth. Living as an artist is one way to carry on as an absurd optimist — by choice — by reaching, gesturing, creating, paying attention, remaining curious. It’s a way of seeing the world, and a damn fine way to keep going.