About me and my work   

          I  was born in Schenectady, NY in 1974 along with my identical twin brother. I grew up in a part of Georgia that was transitioning from rural to suburban and though I have made pictures since early childhood, I have been serious about it since the age of 14. My father was diagnosed with ALS that year and he died when I was 16. Afterward, I earned a BFA from the University of Georgia in 1997. I then walked the 2,200 miles of the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine in 1998. This allowed me to consider all I had seen, done, and experienced thus far in my life. It changed me in ways I am still realizing. I spent the next three years as a bike messenger in Atlanta. When I carried all of my possessions on my back, I could either work in sketchbooks or stop making art. I chose the first option and my sketchbooks became the center of my artistic practice. I completed two cross-continent bicycle tours in the United States and I continued to work blue collar jobs until I went back to school to support my new family in 2006 at the University of Oregon where I earned a bachelors in biology, a master’s in education, and I became a high school science teacher (my re-induction into the middle class). I taught for two years in a public high school in Springfield, Oregon, and ten years at an elite private school in Washington, DC. Finally, I went back to school in 2021 to earn a masters degree in studio art at American University.

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          My background, interests, and the importance of justice and neuroscience in education have influenced my artwork, and drive much of my academic research practice. In my artwork however, I tend towards the personal before the political. My research is, like my art, a journey towards understanding not a pronouncement of it. In my research, life, teaching, and art, I am interested in the journey. I ask questions and learn to ask better questions through the asking. As a young man and then as a hiker, I discovered that obdurate circumstances teach me; as a parent I found that my children teach me; as a teacher, I discovered that my students teach me. Each person I interact with gives me another opportunity to learn. Every day I hope to understand more. I hope to become better at teaching, parenting, learning, and making art by continuing to live and staying open to experiences I record in my sketchbooks.

          I work in sketchbooks every day. The notes I take, the journal entries and poems I write, as well as the sketches and visual experiments I record in my sketchbooks form the center of my artistic practice. My work usually starts with drawing and painting, though I work in all mediums and the detritus of life often finds its way into my 2-D and sculptural work. I let chance initiate many of my images; each painting I create is a portrait of the moments in time that lead to now—combined with the realities I cannot avoid.