Everyone’s life is a story. The arc of birth, childhood, sexual awakening, adulthood, aging, and death charts a lifetime of experiences, both mythic and mundane, that we all share in one form or another. It is the “another” form--the unique perspective that each of us has on these shared experiences--that painting makes available. I believe this ability to give expression to an individual point of view gives painting its value and importance.


After an injury made it difficult for me to mix paint, I began working in oil pastel and mixed media. These new works are inspired by my lower middle-class upbringing in Indiana, my friends and family, my tenure as an art professor and my health. All of the works are rooted in my own experience. They examine and commemorate events from both my deep and recent past, and in so doing, attempt to say something larger about where we come from and how we experience the world.