Welcome to AllArtWorks Featured Artist Series!
1. What other profession is similar to being an artist and why?
I've always thought being a teacher, regardless of the educational level, was similar to being an artist. Their ability to convey ideas/information to effectively connect with their audience requires much of the same creative energy.
2. What’s the nicest thing you can remember someone said about your work, or an individual piece?
The nicest thing anyone has said about my work is that it makes them feel "alive." When I asked them what they meant by that, they told me that my art makes them forget about all the petty trappings of being a person (job, bills, taxes, etc) and reminds them they are experiencing a life that is connected to something beyond their day-to-day worries.
3. What’s one thing you’d like everyone to know about you as an artist?
The one thing I'd like everyone to know about me as an artist is that I am a very selfish artist with a selfless goal. I create art for myself that I hope other people can enjoy as well. But my main motivation is to achieve those moments of ecstasy when I lose myself as an individual and am just being a vehicle for some flow of creative expression. If other people connect with the result of that, that's just icing on the cake. I've had people ask me to paint specific subjects in my "style" (the guy who wanted to immortalize his recently passed dachshund comes to mind) and I decline those commissions because I know that I won't have a good time doing them, if they are possible at all. However, limit your request to a color scheme and one of my general styles and I'll run with it.
4. What was the last piece of art that you saw that blew you away?
I get blown away by a lot or art, but I recently saw some photos of an Anthony Lister mural called "Ballerina" on the side of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators building in LA that really made me tingle.
5. What’s something you haven’t done but you want to do in art/painting?
I want to go "big"! My current techniques kind of limit the size of pieces I do since they need to be laying flat. The largest piece I've done so far is around 50" x 40", but I'd really like to see what I can do in a much larger scale someday.
I'd have to say I like Delacroix better. I think they are both great, but Delacroix pieces have a much more dynamic feel to them that creates a sense of movement and organic life. Ingres is little too static for me.
*The reason we ask about Delacroix and Ingres is because they were contemporaries with wildly different styles!
