I often feel like a human sponge. My painting is in response to what I absorb from the world around me. I am very intrigued with people and their narratives, which add a lot of fuel to my work.

But, why art?

Tolstoy said, “Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is a great matter. Art is an organ of human life, transmitting man’s reasonable perception into feeling.” Next to his mixed media piece in an airport there is a quote by the artist Raymond Saunders: “The important thing about doing my art is that I also live...and the more I bring into myself the more I have a desire and need to translate it into something.” These statements echo my thoughts about how I view painting; it is a translation of life.

I believe the question of why art? Expands to...

why live?

In Art and Fear, David Bayles and Ted Orland say it so well, “And while a hundred civilizations have prospered (sometimes for centuries) without computers or windmills or even the wheel, none have survived even a few generations without art.” People have always needed artistic expression in their lives and found it in many ways. Throughout civilization the arts have played a vital role in every culture, be it cave paintings or a crucifix in a jar of urine.