Absolutely, my pleasure. To be completely honest I don’t think there was a beginning to my interest in art or a place where I decided to be an artist. This is who I am, it’s what I am. So naturally, as an artist I was always making things. Early on it was drawings and later on I was introduced to painting and that’s where my obsession with painting began. Obsession, love affair, in art it’s a fine line and more than not it’s one and the same.

I’m inspired by the wide spectrum of life. Every part of the day holds treasures that spark new ideas and inspirations. Each person in my life does this as well. There’s no telling what new idea that just leaving the house will bring about.

I admire artists like Dan May, Martin Wittfooth, Eric White, Jeff McMillan, Chet Zar, James Jean and many many more. Those are current artists that do fine art and some also do illustration work.

I like what Tom Bagshaw is capable of doing with digital painting, as well as Cam de Leon and even comic artists like Dave Johnson, Dan Panosian and especially Chandler Wood’s LA Story work (if you can find it – facebook I think). I see amazing things in that arena sometimes. There’s a cool artist named Scott Saw that has taken his aesthetic and design sense and melded it with a pinup girl photos called Vixen Photography that’s really beautiful.

Scott Saw / Vixen http://www.scottsaw.com / http://www.vixenphotography.net/ (best stuff is by following them on twitter)

I discovered my style through diligent practice and lots of patience. You have to be persistent and experimental to find new ideas and work out a personal style. I guess the longer version is that I was always in art classes in school, then took as many as I could in university. I always felt like I was searching for something artistically, needed to prove something to myself and wanted to always progress beyond what I was already creating. So with that already programmed in, I started painting in college and then began developing a body of work after graduation. Making art in the real world is vastly different than making work in a school situation. For one, you’re completely on your own as to whether the work is valuable or worth the pursuit. So it’s either got commercial potential or its strictly personal – pretty simple but sometimes those areas are just worlds apart.

I began to work on paintings for myself and challenging my ideas to grow and my style to evolve with each piece. After a while I would stage my own little shows in my apartment or townhouse, local business spaces and small galleries. It just grew from there. My style evolved as I grew as a person and reflected my personality to varying degrees along the way. Once I made the move to Los Angeles I made the conscious decision to not make overtly personal work and to allow the work to grow on its own, and thus my current painting series of The Intimate Parade was born. With that I’ve been pursuing an organic narrative of some Suggestivist nature for the last 10 years and still going.

That “suggestivism” style was one that I’d started playing with in graduate school to describe my style and the process that I worked with. It’s an intuitive process of allowing ideas to pool and then connecting with the more innovative or strong moments and nurturing them into reality.

The Intimate Parade

Suggestivism

If you google “suggestivism” you’ll find a ton of info and images

The Suggestivism group exhibition and book release is the biggest project I’ve tackled so far. That encompasses the work I started in grad school in 1997 and eventually found a way to talk about and curate a strong museum exhibit around in 2011. It was a three year curating and writing process, and eventually we had a three month long show and a lovely 300 page book by Gingko Press and Grand Central Press.

The greatest project to me is always that one on the horizon. It’s that idea that’s a vision just within reach that takes reach and desire to be fulfilled – something of a dream that requires the passion to find the necessary time and energy to bring to fruition. The next museum shows that I’m curating for the future, the new works in my mind for the Intimate Parade and the book ideas that are coming to reality are the greatest projects that I’m most excited about. I’m just excited about all of it really. It’s a wonderful thing to be a part of really.

I browse through a few besides facebook, that’s where I get a lot of interaction with friends and fans.

Then there’s Hi Fructose (great contemporary art magazine), Bloody Elbow (lots of MMA news, updates and rumors there), Fecal Face (San Francisco art blog), Arrested Motion (Los Angeles based / international art news), NYTimes ArtsBeat Blog and Bob Schneider’s music site where he tells stories about his songs inbetween tracks on full albums.

Mostly I listen to music and podcasts while I paint like Mike and Tom Eat Snacks, the Joe Rogan Experience, ESPN UFC Podcast, Adam and Joe, The Tobolowsky Files, Mysterious Universe, The Concert, Real Time with Bill Maher, SModcast, etc.

I guess I’m living my hopes and dreams every day by being an artist and getting up every day and doing that. I don’t take it for granted I’ll tell you that much. I dream of bigger show concepts and finishing up a number of book ideas.

Don’t waste your time wondering why anyone’s not offering you anything like shows or sponsorships or jobs or deals. You’re more powerful and talented than that. Chase your dreams, not someone else’s version of your dreams. You have the ability to change things into something more amazing and beautiful than you might imagine, and if you already know that, what are you waiting for?