When I was 12 years old I discovered
what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. All thru high school I
worked on building a portfolio that would help me get into an art
school. After high school, I attended the Columbus College of Art
and Design for a year. When I returned home to Portsmouth, Ohio for
the summer, I met Robert Dafford. I began working for him as a
summer job on the then newly commissioned Portsmouth Floodwall Mural
Project. That fall, Mr. Dafford asked if I'd be interested in
working for him for a year instead of immediately returning to
school at C.C.A.D. I decided to take a year off, and it turned into
many more, and what began as a summer job turned into a 15 year
career. Thru all of the intervening years I continued to work on my
own paintings and drawings, incorporating all he and the other
artists at Dafford Murals had to teach me. Over the years my
personal work has ranged over a variety of subjects and mediums. I
did a whole series of paintings exploring my roots in southern Ohio
and northern Kentucky. I discovered the Divine Comedy of Dante
Alighieri. I've started incorporating digital manipulation and other
multimedia techniques into my paintings and into the design process
at Dafford Murals. I've spent more than a few years trying to teach myself
renaissance style oil painting techniques. I think I learned how to
paint a decent landscape. I began a long term project writing and
illustrating a graphic novel, The Black Sun. I've self-published the
first 2 chapters, and am planning on finishing the last 3 chapters
and trying to have it published the old fashioned way. Some of my
work is historical illustration, my second love has always been
history and archaeology. I'm especially interested in illustrating
American Indians, specifically the Mississippian Era of prehistory.
Many of my pieces reflect my love of mythology, religions, and
spirituality. But no matter what techniques, mediums, or subject
matter I explore in a piece, I always try to show my understanding
of truth and light {metaphorical as well as literal} in my art. I
firmly believe there is beauty and truth in all aspects of
existence, and it is the purpose of artists, whether they're
painters, poets, etc., to communicate and translate this to the rest
of humanity. Through our art can be seen our understanding of the
world and existence, where we are and where we have been. And more
importantly, where we can go. I hope you appreciate my art for what
it is, my little slice of existence, my keyhole on the world. There
are many galleries of my different kinds of work here.
Paintings,
Drawings,
Digital Illustrations,
digital animations,
The Black Sun, and
of course Murals.
For those who've seen my work before, I hope you find something new.
And for those who are seeing it for the first time, I hope you like
it and come back. I'll be changing and adding things from time to
time as my schedule allows.
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