As for credentials, I don't really like to get all fluffy because it makes me feel like an egomaniac. Let's just say I've earned my keep- I graduated from college with a BA in art, but I don't feel that I produced anything that was any good while I was there. I studied old master painting technique in Italy with Laurence Caruana and Amanda Sage. I've been involved in some pretty awesome shows, festivals, and collaborations- but you can learn all that from my CV. This is the story part.
The focus of my work started as an intention to find something within myself- something deeper than normal waking consciousness. I thought, "if only there was a way to know more..." not really knowing why I wanted to know more. Just knowing there was this urge to get in touch with a part of myself that seemed to somehow know more than I knew. It was an outlet for me to process life, death, and whatever lies between. I had always made art and enjoyed drawing, but it really started, I think, as a response to the death of my mother when I was 11, which was coupled with a series of experiences with beings from "the other side" and anger towards life, wanting answers for the kinds of questions we ask when we experience the death of a loved one.
I paint in a bastardized version of the mischtechnik mostly, but have recently moved into other realms such as digital and airbrush due to the inspiration of my peers and fellow artists such as Clay Chollar, Jessica Perlstein, Seth McMahon, Derek Heinemen, Roman Villagrana, Android Jones, and Amanda Sage. I am open to exploring where creativity can take me, which has been helpful with collaborating with many other artists . Presently I'm exploring digital painting and performing with projection, and have developed a special love for airbrushing, finding ways to combine it with oil painting as well as doing custom clothing and body painting.
I feel that wearable art is creating a culture that is the result of social networking and of shifting the direction of our consciousness away from the chain of big box staple goods and mechanistic lifestyles. Amongst many other benefits, making Art has become a method for hacking my inner fire wall, transcending the pre-frontal cortex of my brain which keeps me from readily accessing the ocean of consciousness that is available in other states such as those of meditation, dreaming, out of body experience, plant medicines, and cosmic awe. Making my art has granted me gradual access to a more integrated and multidimensional reality.
I think the most powerful thing we can accomplish with our work is to inspire others to liberate themselves from the conditioning they've received from excessive television and media bombardment and from the social institutionalization of corporate chains and public education. If we really want to do something good for humanity, we could change the way we understand and relate to the creative life force. Life is creativity, and it is your body and it is running through your body and helping to inform your perceptions of reality, which is the literal creation of your life.
At the present moment, I just see avenues that I have yet to explore. By no means am I any kind of technical wiz. But learning to channel and let creativity flow through you rather than just from you is an art form in its own right and I intend to learn how to do it to the best of my own ability, with my own essence and energy that is unique to me, and hopefully pass something on to others who are walking the artist's path.
