Hello there. I thought after all this time my readers deserved to see what I look like. I have been painting since I can remember. I have a degree in Studio Art from Angelo State University but quickly realized I would starve to death trying to survive as an artist. So I used my science and biology hours to have a wonderful thirty year career with the Texas Commission on Enviromental Quality. My job took me to the most beautiful parts of Texas and the parts I feel most connnected to as a sixth generation Texan. I have always painted landscapes because it is in the land and the earth that I find meaning.I recently had a series of severe seizures. I lost a week. One moment I was fixing my elderly mother lunch at her country home near Utopia and the next thing I remember is a week later waking up in a hospital bed. I'm feeling better every day, thanks for asking.
But here is the strange and wonderful part. As an artist, I have always had conflicts reconciling my urge to capture the beauty of the land in a representational manner and my urges as a contemporary and modern artist to embrace abstraction, the thought of a canvas or piece of paper being nothing more than for an artist to express themselves on. My heros were Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, Milton Avery, Picasso, Monet.........you get the picture, I love them all.
Here is the wonderful part and it makes all the agony and inconvenience of the seizures worthwhile. I now paint differently. All the conflicts I once had are gone, it is all there for the taking when I pick up a brush or a pastel now. I feel complete. And I feel like my major life's work is ahead of me. I feel like a young hopeful artist I once was. I am looking forwards to sharing some of this new work with you. it is not drasticlly different from my older work. I have just been able to put more of who I am into it. Thanks for reading this.
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