Licked That Profile

Well, I think I’ve liked that profile questionare I’m supposed to write. Here it is…

Exercise: Imagine talking to a friend about your work-list some words that you associate with your work.

Mysteries. Haunting. Romantic. Dreamlike. Liberating.

What do you create?
My creations are mixed media paintings, incorporating textiles and fond objects, usually having to do with themes of the dreamlike or fantastic. My currant focus is mermaids. For me, they are full of possibility, mystery, and wonder. What are they really? Do they have power over the things around them… over us? Where do they come from? What are their wants, needs, and their desires? These are questions that we could easily ask of ourselves. Perhaps that is why I (almost) never show their eyes. Eyes are said to be the windows of the soul. In many stories, mermaids are said to have no souls, and maybe that gives people an opportunity to graft themselves onto my creations. A farther example would be that my mermaids have no obvious race, due to the tones I paint in. This (I feel) helps to keep my art universal.

Is the medium related to content? If yes, explain.
Media and content are almost one in the same. I use paints and fond objects in the same way that a writer might use words in a word association exercise. Ideas are formed from what I have available to me, and what I think and feel about those things.

Is technique important to the work? Explain process/technique
Technique is vital to the creative process. I start by doing lots of sketches. Then I put them into photoshop and toy with color and tone. Now here’s the most interesting part to me. I show these sketches to my wife, friends, and just about anyone I can get to look. We talk about what they think and feel about them, what they do and don’t like. I then take that to the final painting with me. I’ll paint individual elements like figures on water color paper, and then start poring resin into a frame. In that frame, I’ll add the background elements and (poring more resin) build forward as I paint, adding the figures in at the opportune time. Textiles and found objects would also be added in this way, to enhance the work.

Is your current work connected to your past work?
Indeed yes. My style has been a result of painting every day, for years and years. As I go, I learn more about what I want out of my work, and how to do it. It’s an evolutionary process.

Is there anything that sets you on fire? Why does it matter? How does it affect your work?
Ideas set me on fire. The fact that a single event, word, feeling, or otherwise can spawn more ideas, and then ideas from those ideas, is so very exciting to me. If you remind yourself that there are no limits, then nothing will ever hold you back. It’s only those who would assume things about you, through your ideas, and feel threatened by you, that can try and tare you down and hold you back.

Exercise: Write some sentences about your vision/ideas/inspiration for your work.
What can things be, which they are now not? Who tells us what can’t be, when none of has lived long enough to see first hand what is? Who are we that if we suffer, feel joy, or love, that we should do it in silence and not express ourselves? Do these materials, which God has given us, not cry out for our conducting? Yes! They say to us, “This is what we can do. Do you dare to be so presumptuous as to put us to good use?” Well, I do.

Are you influenced by other artists &/or movements? Who and how?
I love the comics book artist most of all. People like Alex Ross, Dave McKean, Eddie Campbell, Dan Brereton, Jack Kirby, David Mack, Melinda Gebbie, and many more. These are artist that took all of the academic lessons of the masters, and showed us new ways to tell stories with them. They showed me that as artist we must also be storytellers.

How do you differ from other artists? Content? Style? Conviction?
I am different from other artist in that there is only one of me. My art is as individual as I am, and as long as the only person I try to be is myself, my art will reflect that. Other people may try and hammer their art (as well as themselves) into shapes that they have seen and admired, in others. This only leads to stagnation. Those who know to be themselves, cannot help but permeate everything they do with their very soul, no matter what the content. That’s what style is. That’s what real conviction is. To attack ones work with the very enthusiasm that is the honest to God you.