Welcome to AllArtWorks Featured Artist Series!
1. What other profession is similar to being an artist and why?
I enjoy the focus involved with creating art as I respond to what is in front of me and receive what's moving through me. This past year, I took on some part-time work for an architectural & civil engineering company. I found out that it's easy to be in the same "focus" and flow doing what I would have considered at one time to be quite different work from what my ideas had been about being an artist, yet, there are so many similarities. I believe the reason for it is that the true work and art is about what is happening on the inside.
2. What’s the nicest thing you can remember someone said about your work, or an individual piece?
Someone posted a video online showing the moment his colorblind dad was able to see color for the first time in his life with the help of special glasses while standing in front of one of my murals. I still tear up thinking about it now.
3. What’s one thing you’d like everyone to know about you as an artist?
I'm sure it would depend on what the person wants to know when I'm with them. Whenever I feel safe inside, which is more often than not these days, I share as honestly as I can what is true for me in the moment.
4. What was the last piece of art that you saw that blew you away?
I was recently touched by the work of currently and formerly incarcerated artists exhibiting at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum. I'm drawn to art that I sense comes from a person's heart. My mind can sometimes lock me up in complicated twirling thoughts that feel very dense, and well .... complicated. I feel a sense of freedom inside when I set my precious twirlings aside and connect with the emotions wanting to be expressed. So, when I see what I imagine to be deep emotion and freedom found by connecting with one's own heart, I'm inspired.
5. What’s something you haven’t done but you want to do in art/painting?
I suppose I'll know it when it happens. For me, the real joy and adventure is in the mystery of not knowing until it unfolds.
Probably 25 years ago, I would have had all kinds of things to say about why I like Delacroix better than Ingres, but right now, the reason I would choose Delacroix is that his work is the most recent of the two that I've seen. It was a drawing of one of his tigers and might partially be responsible for inspiring the current painting I'm working on as I contemplate what it means to be courageous.
*The reason we ask about Delacroix and Ingres is because they were contemporaries with wildly different styles!
