Painting is a joy. It is also
work and I work everyday. My ethic is inspired by the rural farming community to which I was born--a place where the discipline
in which one labors is not as important as the discipline with which one labors. My grandparents both grew and
harvested the crops of California’s Central Valley. I am the unexpected artist. My family encouraged me, nurtured my
dream, and helped me to live a life contrary to the expectations of others in my favorite dusty little town, and elsewhere.
I grew up surrounded by natural color fields.
Crop rotations regularly presented different forms and textures, and each season brought new colors in blocks and rows.
These geometric structures and planes that formed the wide-open landscape of my youth have always captivated me. So too have
the people that inhabit this panorama.
I have
great reverence for the human form. I respect all of its manifestations--young, old, agitated, at peace. The simplest gestures
often convey a person's natural dignity. These gestures bear the weight of my compositions. Color ties them to emotion. In
my paintings, elements of abstraction and formal structure are incorporated to lend ambiguity to the implied narrative of
each piece. I leave the story to the viewer.
