I started making art when I was about twelve, trading sketchbooks with friends on weekend nights. We drew in one another’s pages, passed them around, and made something together.
It wasn’t about being better or worse. It was about making a mark and discovering that someone else could see themselves in it.
I still think about art that way.
But making art has also become a way of being alone without feeling separate.
When I draw, paint, or make something with my hands, the world gets quieter. I lose track of time. I feel less separate from everything around me. For a while, there is nothing I need to prove or accomplish. I can simply pay attention and respond to what appears.
I often work with pen and paint without erasing. I like leaving the marks as they are, even when I don’t immediately like them. A mark that feels like a mistake can become information. An accident can open a direction I never intended to explore. Sometimes the piece gives me a problem to solve: how can I work with this unexpected thing and make it belong? I enjoy that challenge. What first feels wrong can become the very thing that makes the work interesting.
I’m drawn to intense detail because it gives the eye somewhere to wander. Layers of lines, patterns, faces, letters, and forms create movement and energy. I’m interested in what happens when that visual density becomes something you can almost feel in your body: the eye moving, attention sharpening, and the excitement of discovering something you haven’t quite seen before.
That feeling brings me back to childhood. There is something playful and timeless about encountering a new visual experience simply for the pleasure of experiencing it. I like when art can return us to that feeling of being young, when the world still has the capacity to surprise us.
I’ve always liked that kind of discovery. When I was young, I would draw letters so abstractly that I would challenge my friends to figure out what they said. I liked making something that wasn’t immediately understood, then watching someone become curious enough to decode it.
I don’t want to tell people exactly what to see. I want to give them something to explore. A line, a face, a letter, or an abstract form can become something different in each person who spends time with it.
For me, looking is part of making. The viewer brings something to the work that I couldn’t make on my own.
Making art can also feel like communion with Spirit. Sometimes I enter a state where I lose track of myself, time, and the need to accomplish anything. I am simply there, making something. Those moments remind me that life can feel good without needing to become anything else.
I believe everyone has the ability to make a mark.
Sometimes I make art to connect. Sometimes I make art to listen. And sometimes I make art simply to remember that I am alive.