For me, painting is transportation into another world.  Each new piece is a exploration — the canvas tells me where to go and the colors and tools are the vehicle to get there. My pieces are expressive, energetic, moody and thought provoking. I have been experimental in subject and technique — yet without confining myself to formula or habit, I have produced cumulative body of work that shows sophistication and cohesiveness, and shares a common thread: exploring color, light, energy and emotion in a way that communicates! When working on a large canvas, brush strokes are not a flick of the wrist, rather a full body gesture!  I am inside that world for a while, playing in the colors and bathing in the light.  The canvas becomes my entire field of vision. Abstract is an escape into the kind of reality we experience only in our dreams! 

I see my paintings as a sort of negotiation with the audience. That viewer may not arrive at the same feeling, sentiment or vision that I had when I created it. They may have their own very different experience or response — interpreting shapes as subject, brush strokes as emotions. That's the sort of "negotiation" happening between artist and audience. But there's also the notion of how I literally manipulate the physics of color and light on the picture plane to interplay with and influence the viewer's physical vision. While my work is generally non-subjective, I thoroughly enjoy when my art has the power to awaken subjective memories or unconscious associations.

At Cypress College in California I majored in art, studying the gamut from drawing and painting, to illustration and advertising design —and most importantly, specialization in what at the time was the still-emerging field of computer graphics, photo manipulation, and desktop publishing.

My digital art has been a big influence in my career and my current paintings. In college, many of my digital pieces began to take on unusual and often high-key color palettes. Many featured light pouring through clouds, fire imagery, surreal landscapes and watery transparencies.

[click to enlarge and view additional digital works]
    

[click to view some more subjective work in traditional media, from college and beyond]

After a semester in Europe, a move to Seattle, and a five-year stint as a graphic designer at the University of Washington —I found myself in Gig Harbor, Washington painting!  I'm now enjoying our new studio setting at our 1915 farmhouse in Port Orchard, Washington.  New surroundings have fostered new inspiration, freedom and experimentation —each new painting is a further exploration into my imagination, my memory and my heart —the journey continues to challenge and excite me!