When you became interested in art? Why did you choose to paint?

I grew up in a family of artists. My father, being an architect and civil engineer, painted in water colors. So as a child, very young I would watch him paint. Of course, I wanted to do what he was doing, so he would give me a paint brush and some paper and teach me to mix colors. My sister gained a masters in Fine Arts - Printmaking, my brother graduated in Architecture, my mother had creative hobbies and painted too, so I gained a desire for art at a very early age. When I entered jr. high school, this was my first opportunity to have an actual dedicated art class. the teacher had already had taught my sister and my brother, for which they had received state awards in a competition. She wanted to see me win too, and I did as well. In choosing to draw, it just came naturally. It was more like I could not understand why other could not do as I was doing. But also, drawing directs your focus to the tip of a pen, the point of a pencil, or the edge of a pastel stick. You are pushed to understand that which is before you intimately.

Do you remember your first artwork, that it was?

It was in first grade, I was 5 or 6 years old, and I painted a watercolor of a curled up, sleeping beagle. The family had a beagle/bird dog mix, so I knew the personality of the dog I was painting. The first grade teacher was astounded, sending home a note to my parents how impressed she was. My father kept that painting in his portfolio. However I am not sure what ever happened to it, I may still have it in that old folder.

What are your favorite themes and why? Is there anything you would not portray?

Negativity is what I will emphatically not depict. However I have done some work, which expressed emotion of fear, a woman blocking her eyes, not to see what is in front of her. A artist friend later saw it and commented that it has to be the most fright evoking thing he had ever seen. I will not even work when I am depressed since this will manifest in the work in some way. Balance, spirituality, free will, our connection to the moment, and generosity are my favorite subjects for my narratives. It is in the images I develop that become the symbols for these topics.

As education influenced your creativity and changed your professional path?

This a good follow up question for the previous question. I attended architecture school and as well should have also tried for a masters in fine art with the amount of time I spent in an art class while in school. Architecture school can be all encompassing, all absorbing and I needed to have the art development to go with it. Architecture though as a profession, has influenced my art in that I see more now that I develop structures that are found in nature. From the skin of a cantaloupe, the vein structure of a leaf, or or the formations of coral, they manifest as my connection to a spiritual context. Architecture is so rectilinear, I search for organic forms. Then the other side of the question: Art engages a deeper connection to creativity and facilitates my problem solving process. Creative thinking can be exercised and then applied to the work process.

From which authors do you get inspiration?

The writings of Carl Jung and Edgar Casey, Fiction by Tom Robbins and Tim Dorsey (he can make me laugh out loud in a pane).

What do you think it is a place of fine arts in contemporary life? Do you think art can affect social life?

Art is what it is today as it was a thousand years ago. It becomes a recording of who we are as a people, a message of where we are as a society, and a connection to what is right in the world. Like architecture defines us spatially. Buildings become our community symbols, our icons. We define our lives as we relate to the community around us. For instance we say turn left at the church to provide directions as simple example. But art is our connectivity to the soul, expressed, recorded for future generations. Art must influence public life otherwise we are not a public, a people, we will have not existed.

Do you think that nationality has its place in art?

Nationality places itself in art regardless or in spite of itself. It will manifest effortlessly. It is unfortunate when nationality becomes the focus, forced as if that is the only reason for existence or conveyance. Nationality should be a part of ones soul that is should become an expressed naturally and without ego.

What books are you reading lately?

Tim Dorsey's, "Hurricane Punch" and professionally, US Green Building Council, LEED version 2.2.

Are there any projects you are working at the moment?

I purchased a new camera with 12Mp capability to satisfy my long love affair with capturing moments in time. There will always be something that will only exist for an instance and then be gone. Like the wind as it caresses our face. The work I am focused on presently is abstract photography. Capturing that which we don't see, as if the camera opens a portal to another world. Manipulation of the image is kept to a minimum while adding to the image like painting. I gravitate to images of structures, textures of color, or natural events with painting over or covering up of graffiti.

How do you see your future?

Moving to a new city to find work so that I will have insurance. Selling my home, buying a new one, and setting up a new studio. Re-connecting with old friends and building a new support structure. All these are immediate. The future brings continued pursuit of connecting to my inner self, to express the individuality that comes from the soul.

Can you say in one sentence, it's art for you?

The art is pushing the boundaries of a medium into formations energized by time in a connection to movement as Zen spontaneities capturing that instant sensation of a caressing wind.