My art started out being influenced by tattoo art and bright colors. Actually, I didn’t have any inspiration and I was calling myself an artist but not making any art. My motivation started with trying to make art every day and eventually I began to gravitate towards more stylized imagery. I began to learn what I liked to make. In 2015 I took more inspiration from vintage fabrics and wallpapers due to my interest in vintage clothes and swing era jazz. It seemed like a natural progression and my imagery became a synthesis of tattoo imagery and more traditional, softer florals and patterns.
For the past few years I’ve been consistently making art, hoping that, given enough thought, I could find out some sort of secret formula or pattern of making. I realize that my secret formula is to not have a plan but just to create. I am exploring my own aesthetic interests and the shapes and colors that excite me the most.
George R.R. Martin spoke of the difference between the gardeners and the architects as being two different methods that people have of creating. To paraphrase, the architects plan everything ahead of time and know exactly what they are creating and “have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up.” Gardeners, on the other hand, find out what their art is and what it means only as it grows. The plan develops at the same time as the product. I am a gardener and always have been. Knowing this nebulous information about myself is invaluable and very empowering. There is no one way to create, nothing is right or wrong. Part of my journey as an artist has been exploring my own personal methods, motivations for creating, and finding my own voice.