“While I enjoy painting all kinds of scenery, LA is my lady. I love being outside exploring and painting the scenery of Southern California. I am most drawn to the often-overlooked beauty of the built environment that surrounds us everyday- freeways, gas stations, side streets and alleys. A simple shadow or fresh morning light can bring these otherwise mundane scenes to life.
Having mostly painted with gouache, I suppose my style has developed in response to the bright, vivid color and wide-open skies that we enjoy nearly year-round. I was also heavily influenced by painters like Mike Hernandez and Mark Boedges after taking workshops with both of them, as well as many of the early California Impressionists like Edgar Payne, Guy Rose and William Wendt.”
Q: What's the first piece of art you ever made that you were truly proud of?
A: To pick a single piece of art is very tough, because I’ve been drawing for as long as I can remember. But there definitely was a first painting I was proud of. It was a 16x20 still life of some potted plants painted in acrylic in my junior year studio art class. It was the first painting I ever completed. Long story short, I was only doing black and white pen and ink drawings at the time and my teacher finally pushed me to paint, after a week or two of me very stubbornly refusing. I’ve been painting ever since.
Q: Do you have any rituals or habits that get you into a creative flow?
A: This changes with every painting, but when I’m in the studio music is always a necessity. It’s usually heavy metal, classic rock or classic western country.
Q: If you could have dinner with any artist (living or dead), who would it be and what would you ask them?
A: I’ve spent way too much time thinking about my answer to this. Payne’s paintings of the San Gabriel mountains never fail to amaze me. As for a current artist, I found a painting of the Vermillion Cliffs by Glenn Dean at this year’s Scottsdale Art Auction that I could have looked at all day long. I know nothing of art history, so I’d take any early California impressionist and ask them the same thing.
Q: What's a book you think every creative person should read?
A: The War of Art by Stephen Pressfield.
Q: What's the piece you're most attached to and could never sell?
A: Thankfully I don’t get too attached to any of my work. The one painting that does come to mind is a little 5x7 I painted of the old Sixth street bridge in downtown LA a few years ago. It was one of the first gouache paintings that I was really pleased with, and it was a successful early experiment with a limited palette of just 3 colors + white. I also never got to even see the old sixth street bridge in person, and the painting has been lingering around for so long now it almost feels like it was painted back when it was still standing.