I started making art at a very young age; I’ve been a professional artist for over twenty years. I have a degree in filmmaking from UCLA, and I worked in the film industry for a handful of years, but I felt I needed to be more creative and dropped everything and went to Florence, Italy where I studied classical realism.
As a classically trained artist I can do actual portraits, but I really enjoy creating new personalities from my imagination. I painted on canvas for many years, but I had also started sculpting, and I was trying to find a way to combine both. When I was asked to be in a show where all the art was to be made from the remnants of an artist’s studio that had burned down, I took the burned paintbrushes. As soon as I painted a face on one of them, I knew I had made something special.
There are three parts to my personal Creative Rituals. The first is finding a unique inspiration. Classical realism and ancient portraits, especially the Roman-Egyptian mummy portraits from Fayum, inspire the faces.
The second Creative Ritual is creating a distinct character. My faces are all imaginary, never copies. I strive for character in my imagined faces and try to convey a sense of emotion, personality and an inner life. The characters come to me the way a novelist’s do—they just show up and tell me who they are, including their names. They seem to paint themselves. I pick one and the attributes and nuances of the particular old paintbrush seem to suggest an individual. Sometimes they are from the past, and sometimes they are contemporary. The fact that people haven’t changed much in thousands of years is part of my message. I’m painting the human spirit.
“Sometimes I think that they are old souls who just want me to paint their portraits.”
The third and last Creative Ritual is the search. I comb through flea markets for old tools and other objects. The dresses come from the local thrift stores. Most of the paintbrushes have either come from my own studio or have been donated by other artists. I work in both oils and acrylics, sometimes both depending on my mood.
I often get ideas in the early morning before I’m quite awake, or late at night and then I have to jump out of bed and scribble it down. With this idea, I’m inspired to go into the studio. The ideas often change mid-flight but they are a starting point. I work on each piece over the course of several days. Layer upon layer, the faces slowly begin to emerge as I paint them, and they take form. These fun little paintings have the charm of hand mirrors, reflecting back our deepest selves.
My work on shovels and axes is a bit more complex. The juxtaposition of the use of the tool and the portrait alludes to inner motivations by those characters. Sometimes a pretty face is really hiding a sharp and aggressive emotion, or an eye reveals the feeling of being locked in a relationship. It’s the combination of the tool’s intended purpose and the portrait that creates the meaning. Painting soft faces on the hard tools, like axes and cleavers, underscores our humanity. The intended purpose of each tool, juxtaposed with the portrait, alludes to inner motivations and social roles. The “old souls” on shovels, remind us of mortality and resurrection. I feel artists play around in the space between the subconscious and the conscious, and then show it to the world. In that way, we are like shamans. Each of my personae has a set of dreams, disappointments, psychology and baggage. In other words, they are us.
“My actual painting process is very simple and traditional.”
Art is fun, and I’ve learned if it’s not fun, you are probably making the wrong art. My art is also a reflection of my state of mind and the relationship is reciprocal. If I’m in a sour mood the faces are often sour and need to be re-worked. And, if I am getting no satisfaction from the work, then I feel anxious until I am able to break through to something new or more interesting. It took me a long time to realize that the art and the artist are the same entity. It’s not just something that I do and then go back to another life. My whole life is art. As I evolved as a person and became clearer on who I was, my art became clearer as well. Finding your voice is a journey with no map. You get lost and backtrack, but eventually, you get there.
Like all artists, my journey has been an exploration of my own self and has opened the channel for some good art to come through me. I’m proud that the work I have created has resonated with people in a joyful way, and that I have touched people all over the world with my imagery. I love what I do, and it has been worth all the hard and lonely times. The joy is in making the work itself. If a picture is worth a thousand words than a portrait is worth a thousand stories.
I hope that people find my work to be provocative, amusing, beautiful and life-affirming. I like taking something that has already had one life and giving it a new one. All the rust, old paint, and other signs of its use are like the scars we all bare, both psychologically and physically. They show a life that has been well lived.
I started making art at a very young age; I’ve been a professional artist for over twenty years. I have a degree in filmmaking from UCLA, and I worked in the film industry for a handful of years, but I felt I needed to be more creative and dropped everything and went to Florence, Italy where I studied classical realism.
As a classically trained artist I can do actual portraits, but I really enjoy creating new personalities from my imagination. I painted on canvas for many years, but I had also started sculpting, and I was trying to find a way to combine both. When I was asked to be in a show where all the art was to be made from the remnants of an artist’s studio that had burned down, I took the burned paintbrushes. As soon as I painted a face on one of them, I knew I had made something special.
There are three parts to my personal Creative Rituals. The first is finding a unique inspiration. Classical realism and ancient portraits, especially the Roman-Egyptian mummy portraits from Fayum, inspire the faces.
The second Creative Ritual is creating a distinct character. My faces are all imaginary, never copies. I strive for character in my imagined faces and try to convey a sense of emotion, personality and an inner life. The characters come to me the way a novelist’s do—they just show up and tell me who they are, including their names. They seem to paint themselves. I pick one and the attributes and nuances of the particular old paintbrush seem to suggest an individual. Sometimes they are from the past, and sometimes they are contemporary. The fact that people haven’t changed much in thousands of years is part of my message. I’m painting the human spirit.
“Sometimes I think that they are old souls who just want me to paint their portraits.”
The third and last Creative Ritual is the search. I comb through flea markets for old tools and other objects. The dresses come from the local thrift stores. Most of the paintbrushes have either come from my own studio or have been donated by other artists. I work in both oils and acrylics, sometimes both depending on my mood.
I often get ideas in the early morning before I’m quite awake, or late at night and then I have to jump out of bed and scribble it down. With this idea, I’m inspired to go into the studio. The ideas often change mid-flight but they are a starting point. I work on each piece over the course of several days. Layer upon layer, the faces slowly begin to emerge as I paint them, and they take form. These fun little paintings have the charm of hand mirrors, reflecting back our deepest selves.
My work on shovels and axes is a bit more complex. The juxtaposition of the use of the tool and the portrait alludes to inner motivations by those characters. Sometimes a pretty face is really hiding a sharp and aggressive emotion, or an eye reveals the feeling of being locked in a relationship. It’s the combination of the tool’s intended purpose and the portrait that creates the meaning. Painting soft faces on the hard tools, like axes and cleavers, underscores our humanity. The intended purpose of each tool, juxtaposed with the portrait, alludes to inner motivations and social roles. The “old souls” on shovels, remind us of mortality and resurrection. I feel artists play around in the space between the subconscious and the conscious, and then show it to the world. In that way, we are like shamans. Each of my personae has a set of dreams, disappointments, psychology and baggage. In other words, they are us.
“My actual painting process is very simple and traditional.”
Art is fun, and I’ve learned if it’s not fun, you are probably making the wrong art. My art is also a reflection of my state of mind and the relationship is reciprocal. If I’m in a sour mood the faces are often sour and need to be re-worked. And, if I am getting no satisfaction from the work, then I feel anxious until I am able to break through to something new or more interesting. It took me a long time to realize that the art and the artist are the same entity. It’s not just something that I do and then go back to another life. My whole life is art. As I evolved as a person and became clearer on who I was, my art became clearer as well. Finding your voice is a journey with no map. You get lost and backtrack, but eventually, you get there.
Like all artists, my journey has been an exploration of my own self and has opened the channel for some good art to come through me. I’m proud that the work I have created has resonated with people in a joyful way, and that I have touched people all over the world with my imagery. I love what I do, and it has been worth all the hard and lonely times. The joy is in making the work itself. If a picture is worth a thousand words than a portrait is worth a thousand stories.
I hope that people find my work to be provocative, amusing, beautiful and life-affirming. I like taking something that has already had one life and giving it a new one. All the rust, old paint, and other signs of its use are like the scars we all bare, both psychologically and physically. They show a life that has been well lived.
