My formal education lasted four years and took place at the School of Visual Arts in New York, but I consider my real educators to be J.C. Lyendecker, Edward Gorey, Salvador Dali, Maxfield Parrish, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, and Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. Contemporary artists that inspire me are Chris Van Allsburg, Mark Ryden, John Currin, Glenn Brown, Stephen Gammel, Terry Gilliam, Tori Amos, and Danny Elfman.
What motivates me to create art is the urge to inspire others through the images I create in the same way that I have been inspired by the world around me. When I see something beautiful or mysterious or both, whether in the natural world or the art world, I am not satisfied to merely keep the powerful effect it has on me to myself.I attempt to make something of my own, through images in pencil or oil, that someone else would see and be impressed or inspired by. My primary drawing style is one that clearly represents a three-dimensional object that appears as real as possible in a physical way even though the subject itself may be something that does not exist in what we think of as the real world.
