Inspiration for the works in this show, come from a number of sources. Forests and plants are my oldest and deepest muses. The landscapes in my works originate from loving the woods behind my house as a child, as well as the fantasy, and science fiction stories that I enjoyed reading growing up. 

Telling stories and communicating concepts also interest me. Many images start as doodles that end up reflecting daily events. 

Thorn with Thorns illustrates the idea of self protection taken too far. A thorn certainly doesn’t need thorns. 

Scary Mouth Cavern is an image that makes me wonder “is the cave as scary as it appears?” 

Tender Reptiles is an illustration of tenderness in unexpected places. When I visited Florida this year I was surprised to see that alligators liked to cuddle up with each other in groups. 

The original sketch for Mother and Tightrope was created at a time when my mother had long felt like she needed to treat me with kid gloves as she considered me quite sensitive. I think of the tightrope as a metaphor for how my Mom might have felt relating to me. I wanted her to communicate with me more directly and with less extreme care. In this picture I have her recently off the tightrope. 

Steve Buckman’s Comet is an image that was inspired by a photo taken by Steve Buckman of the Comet  Hale – Bopp soaring over a chimney. I liked how the comet could read as a comet or smoke from the chimney. I took a photo of Steve’s roof as a reference image to create my own version of the idea. I think of this image as a portrait of Steve Buckman.

Artists that influence my work are Dr, Seuss, Tolkien, Burchfield, Grant Wood, and Rousseau. Other influences are Chinese scholar rocks, Early Chinese bronzes, Japanese scrolls, and Indian sculpture.

Materials

For most of the works in this show, I started with ink drawings on Aquabee watercolor paper. Some of these drawings were transferred to new sheets of watercolor paper with pencil and reworked. A few had the perspective refined with the software programs “Adobe Dimensions” and “Bryce”. For the images with figures in them, I used the program “Poser” to pose digital models as reference. The materials used for the final images were magic markers, colored pencil, watercolor, gauche, and Caran D’ache watersoluble artist’s crayons.

Some images are Iris prints of mixed media work. These prints are custom made, and color-corrected. The Iris or Giclee process makes it possible to create affordable, high quality prints of any digital image. Inks have an estimated 200-year lifespan under normal conditions, and are rich and vibrant, faithfully capturing the colors of the original.