Who am I and how do I work?

 I have been an artist for 20 years, I’d say my whole life but my first exhibition wasn’t until I was 19. It has certainly not been an easy road, and there have been times in my life that I didn’t paint for years on end, they were dark years.

Painting is my light, my freedom, and my way of connecting to the divine.

When I talk to people about my creative process I often use words like ‘in the flow’ or  ‘allowing the work to happen’, and truly a lot of the time I do not feel like its ‘me’ painting. It seems that, when I allow, when I am in alignment, the work flows through me, creation creating.

If you have read the book ‘Big Magic’ by Elizabeth Gilbert (and if you haven’t I highly recommend it), she talks of ‘ideas’ floating around like entities or souls, waiting to be born, and we can allow that to happen. I try to be in alignment to let the ideas come.

Many times before I paint I will meditate to get myself into that flow state, even when I am painting it can feel like meditation. The paint and the brush take over, time seems to disappear and the work “creates” itself.

I use many techniques and mediums in my work depending on what I am creating. Most times I start the process with inks, ‘drawing’ with a paint brush or dip pen and then working up the piece from in layers from there.

My work is my passion and my purpose, I feel the work is created through me for other people to be able to connect with something higher. Many people say that my work really makes then ‘feel’ something, that means so much to me, that people are able to connect in that way, my hope, by creating soul portraits and working closely with someone is to be able to truly help someone connect to their own divinity, to the truth of who they really are.