My work has been evolving all my life and no doubt will continue to do so. On the whole, I am best known as a photorealistic pencil artist, specializing in animal subjects. And while it is true that I began my career as a dedicated pencil artist, today I work in a variety of mediums including graphite, charcoal, wax-, oil- and water-based colored pencil, powder blender, watercolor and ink. Photorealism was my first artistic passion, and I was obsessed with accuracy and precision long before I ever heard the word or knew what it meant. Time and life taught me to bring the emotional, spiritual component of my subjects to life on paper. |
I began my professional career as a pet portrait artist, working on commission. My love of animals, the earth, nature and the elements led me to begin creating what I have always thought of as my "spirit" art. Originally, these pieces were loosely centered around the concept of totem or spirit animals, what they represented, and, depending on the piece, what they meant to me or to my client personally. These creations in turn sparked my interest in mixed media, and as I began to experiment with paint, ink and powder blender, whole new worlds of possibility opened up for me, and I became as interested in symbolic, graphic and impressionistic expression as I am in representational. And yet, even as new mediums, ideas and techniques have revolutionized and diversified my art, all of my work remains unified by my profound connection to our common mother, the earth, and all of her magnificent creatures. I believe they are our greatest teachers, and my art is about the lessons I have learned from them, and from being out in the great wild. It's about the ebb and the flow of life, and the evolution of dreams into realities.