“Everything comes from the mind. I paint what I have lived. The main point of my work is to evoke emotion. I hope that everyone can look at one of my paintings and say, I’ve felt that way before.”

Fascinated with the human body, I decided at an early age to pursue the study of medicine. However, as a teen I realized that with art I could accomplish what few physicians would ever be capable of achieving – the blending and bending of the emotional and physical states of the subject – with that realization I decided to become an artist.

My early work was rooted in realism. However, I reached a major point of departure as I concluded that the camera was far more capable of capturing the true essence of the material world than was any artist. This is when I began my conceptual approach.

My influences are broad and varied. The portrait paintings of John Singer Sergeant and the round, interpretive tough realistic Polynesian studies of Gauguin combined with the instinctive, uninhibited modern approaches of mentors such as Odd Nerdrum, Dave McKean, Jenny Saville, Alyssa Monks, Robert and Shanna Parkeharrison, and Maggie Taylor have all proved to be a heavy influence in my work.

I find it a necessity that an artist realizes what forces are acting upon him, so that he may then use them, methodically, to wrought a creation spawned by his imagination; otherwise, he will be controlled by them, and in so doing cease to be the creator. Fully cognizant of this, I approach the ephemeral world of emotions where we daily tread and traipse and toil, and strangely capture it using the very real and physical form of the human body.

“There can be no transforming of darkness into light without emotion.”

Carl Jung