Escape Into Life, online arts journal, pushes the boundaries of visual art and
literature, blending the two together until they become one poem – a work of Visual Poetry.
Surrealist Before the painting is finished, the vision is already fading to memory. I can only hope that I've understood enough of the message to help me further along this tiresome trek.
My ultimate goal is walk right into one of my canvases and never return, but the door opens and the door closes in the blink of an eye. the barriers are endless and the map I followed getting here is torn and unreadable. Perhaps I've pretended to know where I was all along just to feel more comfortable, but it doesn't make it any less real.
My paintings have been misinterpreted as illusion or confused. Some people see nothing in them at all -- and I ask myself how we have arrived at this point where dreams are not explored, imaginations are not encouraged and so many folks go through life with blinders on?
I speak in visual metaphor. The manipulation of my subject matter is natural and balanced. The psychological state of events is for you, the viewer to extrapolate -- the results of which you may find you least expected.
There is an element of déjà vu in my work as well as a kind of "separation anxiety" from a time and place where imagination and dreams were the tools of the artist. Now, decorating trends and corporate contracts have replaced these tools andartist such as me continue to work with content while many have chosen brand recognition.
An artist does what he must. I am a Surrealist because this how the world presents itself to me and I in turn relate to it.
I am a thinker and a visionary. I am hopeful and curious and apocalyptic. I am alone in this place and I am trying to find my own answers, this is why I paint what I do. And, my art will never match a couch.
Born: Bloomdale, Ohio 1969 Education: BFA (Fine Art & Psychology), Mount Union college, Alliance, Ohio MFA, Kent State University, Kent, Ohio Awards: Evelyn Cook Weber Prize, Scotty Flamm Awart for Excellence in Art and Community Service Publications: The Oregonian, Portland, Oregon; Northwest Drizzle, Seattle, Washington; Willamette Week, Portland, Oregon; News Times, Forest Grove, Oregon Television: Oregon Art Beat, OPB, Portland, Oregon Member Urban Art Network
