When he was three years-old, he asked me to draw him a horse. He wasn’t satisfied with my drawing, so he drew one himself. He’s been drawing ever since, is the story my grandmother would tell about how I started creating art. Those fundamental moments propelled me from the Midwest and across the United States where I would work in theater, digital arts, and my own canvas painting.
After earning my Bachelors of Fine Arts, I worked as a scenic artist on the West Coast at theaters like the Seattle Repertory Theater and University of California at Berkeley. Theatre provided me with some of the best skills derived from traditional techniques that date back to the Renaissance.
There I honed my skills for near photorealistic reproduction, but more specifically, I acquired an admiration of artistic movements from the nineteenth century, especially Impressionism. Theatrical painting and Impressionism have similar concepts of light and therefore color. I absorbed these concepts into my own work. Impressionists paint en-plein air to represent the environment in full light and color, and, likewise, scenic artist recreate an environment in combination with theatrical light effects to tell a story with color.
Using color, light, as well as the subject matter to relate a narrative remains a goal for every one of my paintings. The briefest moments can become eternal when beautifully rendered.
