You came all the way here…I like you

I grew up with campfires and fry sauce in a small town in Idaho, and began my career painting at the age of 18 when I left America to travel. I painted murals along the way to fund the plane tickets, and it was within this time I started focusing on fine art. What makes it ‘fine’ I don’t know, I never went to art school.

Am I supposed to write this in third person?

I am tremendously interested in so much…  (place me in any room and watch me spin) but most of all I am interested in the arrangement of color. I can’t get enough of the relationships within it. If I stare long enough I think I could answer just about any question. And I would love to share a bit of my world with you. That's what I’m here for. ( Or at least that's what I’ve decided I’m here for Viktor Frankl.)

Everything I paint is done with a brush as I believe seeing brush strokes is like seeing a hand written letter. My fine art is done in acrylic,  oil,  and occasional human tears. 

*segue*

Now.

My intention….Ah…

It took a long time for me to even begin articulating it. I still am trying to. Painting feels like I am bumping up against the edges of my comprehension. I like it that way. What I know is that I am fiercely in love with this world, even if I don’t like parts of it. I love, and I mean love, the vast spectrums of this place. How it inhales and exhales, how it burns then rains, brings us to our knees and then lifts us off them, challenging us with its kaleidoscope of dualities. I paint those a lot; dualities. They make us face ourselves. Death next to birth, and fireflies inside darkness.

I spent many years trying to find the words to describe what I hope my paintings provide for the world, and the truth I have come to is that I want us to believe. To believe in dragons even if you will never see one. You know that ‘special something’ you feel sometimes? Like a distant memory or an old life that seems to rear its head when you hear a song? I think that is a part of ourselves that may be forgotten; an old part of our soul. I want to wake that up. If theres some part of us that is a wolf, I want to make it howl. If there is some part of us that doubts the stunning and raucous enormity of being, I hope to hush that doubt, and take its hand to dance.

(….Thank you for reading until the end. I like that quality in a person)