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. I collect materials to work on in the waste streams of the institutions that employ me and in recycling bins. Though this practice started when I was a young man- from necessity, it is important to me that I am picking up the earth while I create art. 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.