Creating art has always been some form of a north star for me. It is the steady beating call of something I sometimes forget to follow. Is it a thread that pulls, waiting for me to get out of my chaos enough to realize that I am being pulled at all.

 I do not remember a time I was not being pulled toward the creative act. As a kid, I had a point to prove– so I became obsessed by any means necessary to perfecting my work. Doing charcoal portraits that looked as much like photographs as I could get them. It was a bit obsessive, but taught me much about shade and shadow and proportions. 

I live in Portland, Oregon, a good landing place for the time being. I love the coast and the mountains too much to entertain the idea of living elsewhere in the States. The Pacific Northwest is my home and feels like fertile ground for my creativity.

I am an architect, which has in many ways shaped my art. It has taught me how people interact with the 3D world around them, how people flow through space. What anchors someone, what subconscious workings create comfort or discomfort in a space. I like thinking about my art as an extension of that, or maybe my architecture as an extension of my art. My art can be part of that 3D interaction. It can draw you in or shut you out. It can create a point of reference. It's 2D, but we can visually interact with it. I like that play between the two. 

I don’t like drawing identities around my artist self too much, which makes this “about” page kinda tricky. I don't want to put “I am an Oil Paint Artist” because suddenly that reads as a proper noun. And suddenly, if I decide I want to make sculptures, my sense of self gets all mixed around. You don’t need to know all this information about me. But that's ok. It’s how my brain is working right now. 

I’m currently having fun with acrylic paint, oil paint, and oil sticks(!!!). They give my heart and body that “holy %#!$ what is this?!?!?” feeling. I get excited about color. The blending and flow of it, how it interacts with itself in surprising ways… like finding that purple and green do not always make brown, even though the color wheel tells you it will. I do not always know what the art coming through me wants to be. That's the juicy stuff I do this for. It has come up as realistic portraits, nude women, bold colors, abstraction mixed with realism, human movement, and earthy motifs. I try to paint emotion… I’m not entirely sure what that means or how that shows up in my work, but I’m real curious about it.

I get excited knowing that the internal conversation you have with my art is completely different than mine, or the person standing next to you. That shit is magical.

All this to say… the art I’m putting out into the world is a physical expression of my curiosities, of a lifetime of practice enmeshed with a single second spark of “Oh that's what it needs”. It is my tension and my flow. May this work incite emotion and exploration within you, as it has for me.