The conflicts between spirit and body, freedom and censorship, Old Testament Law and Spiritual Liberty, self-righteousness and selflessness, guilt and redemption are major subjects of my work, because they are major parts of my existence. The spiritual war I experience, living by faith and not by works of the Law, has produced in me an acute awareness of the preciousness of my freedom in Christ. Freedom from fear (so often based upon man-made judgmental constraints) is critical in the process of inspiration, conceptualization and creation of art. Fear stifles creation, and the struggle to be loosed from fear has helped me to create artwork that I enjoy. For me, to live out my freedom is manifested in the act of creating. The expression of ideas concerning issues that may descent from conventional or traditional precepts or dogmas is a glorification of the freedom bestowed upon us by God, through his only begotten Son.

In my daily life, I try to stick closely to the principles taught by Jesus and the Apostles, and those principles are summed up in one sentence, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no one wrong, and thus fulfills the Law. A key to this commandment is to love others as “yourself”, which I have come to realize means to love others as whom you are. Preconceptions can get in the way of knowing how to love others, as well as understanding how much we’re loved.

Expressing love is a deed of communication, it takes infinite forms, and this includes making art. This being said, I have tried to simply let my art reflect who I am as a person, which is my major goal. I realize that that is a simple goal, because artwork will naturally reflect its maker in some way, however I see a correlation between my everyday life and my production of artwork. Art does not mimic life, but it is an integral part of life. How I live and think is essential to the work I end up producing, and since I want to reflect God’s character, so too His work in me will be present in my work. By pressing forward to become a more spiritually aware person, my artwork should naturally conform to what I want it to be. As God’s fingerprint is in me (because I am a new-creation born of Him), so too some of Christ’s fingerprints will exist in what I make. As my father taught me, there should be hope in what is made, for God’s love to us, especially in our darkest trials, will ultimately produce hope within our hearts, if we so allow.

I see life as a plethoric interaction between the spiritual and the physical worlds. This interaction is subtle and overt; simple and complex; beautiful and repulsive, so for my art production I have utilized a wide variety of materials and techniques to accomplish my artistic goals. My work varies from representational to abstract imagery, yet in concept each piece still contains the essence of my struggle to develop into that which I am becoming. The process of creating is, in many ways, the most important part of being an artist. Each piece of work is not merely an ‘end’ product, but rather it is a representation of the process.

One discipline (in any given medium) or technique interacts with every other discipline or technique. The lessons I’ve learned as a painter have effected my way of making pottery, and my experiences with clay and fire influence my expressions in video or film. Art is art, no matter what medium is used, and each medium contains strengths and weaknesses that support every other medium. That has been my perspective and experience, as I strive to become a better artist.

As most artists will say, “Ive been making art since I was a child.” I know its a bit of a cliche, but nonetheless its true for me. As far back as I can remember, Ive been solely interested in creating things of color, sound, or shape. I hope not to bore you with a long history of my development as an artist, however where I am now naturally is based upon the family that I come from, for we are all products of environmental experiences and genetics.

I come from a family of teachers and artists. My father taught 7th grade science for over thirty years. My dads brother, my Uncle Laurence, is an acclaimed Education professor, teaching at UCSB for many years. His son Larry is also an acclaimed professor, in Economics. Paul, Laurences second son, was an operatic tenor, and ran the Santa Barbara Civic Light Opera House for many years. I also have a number of cousins who are professors around the county, and so I suppose it was natural that I too teach.

My dad was a very well respected teacher in his school district, and interestingly enough I have met some of his former students as adults, and they all remember his powerful presence in the classroom. He also was a lay-minister for our church, since the 1950s, teaching Bible studies and giving sermons to large and small groups of people all around the country. He was also very active with a group named, Camp Blessing, directing Christian teen camps for over twenty years. I had been a teen at many of those camps and they were great experiences. Finally, when I had grown up and become a Christian as well, I had the opportunity to council teens and teach drama under his direction. I found that he was an amazingly loving and wise leader. There have been so many people that he has positively effected, that still call him”Uncle”. I learned from him the dynamics of love, and gained my talents of ministering and teaching from him, even as he received those things from his father. Up until last year, when I had to move to downstate NY, I served as a lay-minister for the same Church group, holding weekly Bible studies for over three years.

My father and my mother are both inclined towards art, though they hadnt pursued it. Now that dad is retired, he sculpts in wood; something that he had enjoyed and was quite good at when he was younger. My mom was always an excellent singer, and when she was a young girl, she had competed in some singing contests, and had done well. Music and singing were an integral part of my growing up in our family and in our Church, too.

I discovered classical music very early in life, and found it to be a safe haven during some very turbulent times growing up. Things in the neighborhood I grew up in were often quite violent. I had been a pacifist as a child because non-violence was the way of the New Testament, and I had taken the gospel of Jesus very seriously even as a young child. And one who does not fight back is an easy target, especially for kids inclined toward violence. This meant that I spent much of my time alone for safetys sake. So, I began a journey of exploring my own mind and creativity. Listening to Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, and Rachmaninoff had been a saving grace for my sanity. I spent many hours in front of the stereo playing classical albums as loudly as my mother could handle, and I found the musical structures an amazing thing. At some point, I realized that art and emotional expression were integrally linked. We had an old B-flat player piano in the house, and by the age of 8, I was teaching myself to play piano, and began to try to compose music. Often, when no one else was around, I was lost in creating and structuring sounds that fit my emotional state.

By the time I reached High School, I was firmly planted as an artistic person. I got seriously involved in acting and singing on the stage. I loved performing. And by the end of High School, I had been exposed to abstract art, and tried my hand in it, under the encouragement of my art teacher, Mr. Coniglio. As most kids do, when looking at a DeCooning or Kline painting, I had thought, “What a mess…” But once I attempted to do abstraction, I realized there was much more to painting than making something look like a photograph. Instead, I found that concept and expression were integrally linked to color and brush structure, and composition of a frame had to do with leading a viewers eyes to where the artist intended.

In Undergraduate College, I drove myself to learn as much as I could about art making, and also studied Art Education. I found clay, as a medium, and began to make pottery, ceramic sculptures, and used clay, earth, and organic materials in making paints for my abstract paintings. I graduated with a duel degree in Art Education and Ceramic Design. The process of working with clay, water, fire, and time really effected my art making in a positive way. I leaned toward making art that had as much to do with the nature of the materials as with the idea of the imagery. I continued to work in various mediums equally, for I saw art as a singular entity, with the medium classifications as mere dressing, and I incorporated whatever I learned into each piece I created. This is when I began to explore the idea of making sculptural paintings, and was very interested in the concepts of 2D and 3D artwork, and how they effected the brain.