Miles of Mesquite Painting

Experiencing woods and plateaus growing up in the Arkansas Ozarks, I always had a strong personal desire to connect to nature. I am now a Texas artist with a long residency in southern Spain and New Mexico, so consider myself a Southwestern artist. Southern Spain is where I discovered free-form graffiti. Its political nature and angry, quickly drawn lines peeked my interest wherever I would go there. When I realized that fire strokes made from a candle could imitate spray paint and allow me to paint these furious expressions, I began exploring this new media. Through my travels, personal and professional experiences, I have seen a great deal of social and ecological injustice. I love nice-looking things, but I myself feel that art has a moral obligation to change old patterns of thinking. When the viewer looks at my work, I hope they see an abstract expression of what it is to connect to nature. On the other hand, I hope they also understand a rebellion against how we conceptualize nature in our biased human way. Instead of a landscape we could fantasize about, I encourage the viewer to love spider legs, mosquitoes, bees, the desert floor from the vantage point of prickly reeds, or uninviting bluffs caked in mud. In my work, nature does not submit to our human expectations. It holds its own power, asking our permission to exist while behaving fiercely and not fearing us at all.