ABOUT

I started just like everyone else

My journey in the visual arts began just like most of the world, as disproportional scribbles of my favorite things. What made me a little different is that in those early moments of creativity I quickly realized I was taking those subjects from my imagination or memory and making them tangible. I could celebrate my love for tigers, baseball players or a ninja turtle and create a material reflection of them at the same time. I might not have a pet T-Rex, but I could make one! This epiphany gave me the passion to swim out into the deep water of art creation and get comfortable there. Where others felt defeated by their failures, I felt determined to figure it out, to stay afloat. Getting it right was just another puzzle to solve to enrich my world with something new.

Eventually the determination paid off and I was able to fit the pieces to many of those puzzles and that gave me something even more valuable than artistic ability. It gave me the tools to approach everything in my life the same way. My creativity became my perspective. As an adult I use the same strategies and resolve from those early years to approach my career, my relationship with art and even how to get my kids out of bed in the morning. 

Influences
My design influences come primarily from film where art directors like John Hoesli (2001 A Space Odyssey), Hidefumi Hanatani (Kill Bill) and Dan Weil (The Fifth Element) showed me how powerful the bold and modern use of color, typography and composition can be. As for painting, I was heavily influenced by early landscape painters like Paul Brill and Gillis van Coninxloo, as well as the 19th century photographers and painters that captured the wilderness of the United States. Albert Bierstadt, Winslow Homer, John Muir, and Ansel Adams all inspired me to get off of my couch and find the hidden places that I felt others should see.

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