My work over the past couple of years has become a reflection of “Feelings” that we experience in our day-to-day lives. Feelings can be expressed in many ways: through color, form, texture, expression of movement, subtle details, etc. To express feelings through artwork is one of the most complicated avenues I have ever pursued, but I think it is inevitable that each artist reveals himself through his artwork. Have you ever seen an artist's work that is short, squat looking and then you meet the artisan, who was short and squat looking, and then wonder if the two correlate? I think that by revealing personality traits or expressions in artwork, we keep a closer touch with our forms, color, moods and the work becomes removed from the production factory mindset. Someone once told me that everyone is an artist in youth, and the hardest part in our lives is keeping the creative side as we become adults.

      Much of my artwork is created through a trial and error process. I have trained with many artists who use only one technique, but I have never felt there was only one way to do something. By experimentation and researching different materials and techniques, I bring pieces of nature, or a feeling, or a mood to my artwork that hopefully will engage the viewer to ask how that was done, or I wonder what he was thinking about when he made that piece. I often record images that pass through my thoughts in a piece or recreate an object I had seen the day before in the deep woods growing on a rotten log. To translate the natural environment into artwork takes a lot of practice and devotion even in failure. For example, I can remember a time when I struggled with how to make a particular bug detail, and it took 17 trials before I had the one I wanted. Creating artwork can be very rewarding and I often encourage people to practice it in all aspects of life.