I am in love with the outdoors. I almost never want to be inside. When I paint, I try to evoke the sensations that I have when I’m surrounded by nature. I want viewers to feel the sensations of being outside. Sensations like the blazing noonday sunshine, or a wet evening drizzle are important to me. When I paint a sunset I want to remind the viewers of the colors of the most beautiful sunset they’ve ever seen. I observe the world around me and paint what I see.

The days that I have spent cycling through Pennsylvania, New York, Austin, South Texas, and Mexico have directly influenced my work. I reconnect with nature as I ride my bike, so my bicycle frequently appears in my art. I try to capture elements of speed and motion to give my work the feeling of being on a bicycle. Sometimes I use my bicycle as a paintbrush and ride it across the canvas or gallery floor. When I paint a landscape with my bike, I interpret the memories of bicycling during a sunset or through a meadow. I want my paintings to evoke the feelings of freedom and happiness that come from spending time pedaling along the open road and soaking up the beauty of nature.

I paint people and animals because we can sense so much from watching another experience a sensation or emotion. The people and animals in my paintings serve as visual sounding boards for sensual or emotional experiences. You can see what a subject is wearing, the a gleam of moisture on his or her skin, his or her posture, his or her facial expression, and sense what the subject is going through.

One of the challenges of painting from nature is cramming three-dimensional mass and vastness onto a small, two-dimensional canvas. One way I handle this is by making my compositions as large as possible. Sometimes a canvas isn’t big enough and I paint directly on the architecture. Another way to achieve three-dimensional realism is to paint pictures of small things and make them larger than life. Sometimes, my subjects seem to reach outside of the canvas. I often need to simply what I’m painting by editing out detritus or non-ideal elements. I choose to focus on beauty.