Artist statement
“If you asked me for the sum total, asked me — What is your ambition? Basically, the answer is just to make you a little more aware than you were the day before how beautiful the world is.”
Art has always been an essential part of human culture. Making art calls us to the humanity we share. Its resonance with others binds community together, inspiring us to be our best selves.
Everyone is creative, each in their own way. We are born creative. Our education, personal, familial, social begins at an early age to stifle that creativity into conformity. My wish as an artist is first to confront that deep crust of education to discover the rich inner life that languishes beneath it. The search for expression brings it to light.
It is a profoundly personal, and fearsome endeavor. At the same time, it is a quest that needs to be shared so that each person might themselves be encouraged and empowered to begin that search for themselves.
In that way, I see an essential part of my own art being an invitation to others. For me, this cannot be a passive wish for the art to touch others' feeling, although that is hoped for. Rather it is an active inclusion, through every means possible, of the ever changing reality I am given, a struggle to see my life and life itself as it is. This begins with myself in a repeated effort to live fully, fail often in that effort, and try again. To remember that I exist and experience that gift. However, to express real meaning, it must find a vitality in an active engagement with others, understanding I am only a part of the ecology of bringing creativity into being. Finally it is the seeing, experiencing with others the awe of being in the scale of life together.
In this way, the artwork itself is simply a result of that search for Self, for the feeling of a collective humanity, for the extraordinary beauty of the world.