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Art is a language that is a basic product of human cognition. I believe that all humans have access to a bank of archetypes from which to draw as we move through the world. Like any artist or viewer, I bring my full human experience to the acts of viewing and making. I was born with cerebral palsy affecting all four limbs, and I use a wheelchair to get around. Naturally, cerebral palsy became a tool within my process early on. It has shaped and continues to shape the very marks I make. It has also shaped my interior creative process. Because of the extra physical effort that I must expend to make marks on and manipulate a surface, it is necessary for me to make many creative decisions mentally, in advance. This forces an early self-examination of motive and concept. My physical challenge also manifests itself optically; in the way that I see. Sometimes I find myself looking at objects and for a split second seeing only their general shapes. I harnessed this phenomenon to my advantage, and because of it I know objects more intimately than many others.
Because of my disability and the responses and expectations that it provoked in other art students and faculty, I sometimes felt like an outsider artist within the Marshall University art department. I now understand that this unspoken label gave me an unusual amount of freedom to experiment within a university setting. At first, in order to gain access to studio art classes and the studio art major, I had to defend my abilities without knowing those abilities in their maturity. A few faculty members within the art department responded positively to my dogged pursuit, including Michael Cornfeld, who allowed me to participate in an advanced studio class even before I became an art major. Like any art student, I had to prove my aptitude in the area of design. Photography was the tool that allowed my mentors to measure more closely my true understanding. My study of photography was the watershed point at which I became less an outsider artist and more an insider and full participant in the local arts community. I have since moved away from photography as a primary tool, but I still employ it as an element in image-making often.
I have always been drawn to mixed media and the potential connection between mark-making and performance. My work to date has been influenced by artists like Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Raymond Pettibon, Alice Neil, Kathe kollwitz, and The Art Guys.

What Happens Under Lock and Key?

2008

Billy

2009

Boy Giving Birth to a Squid (Self Portrait at nine years old)

2009

bloody mouth (Self portrait) after accident

2009

Portrait of a socialist worker (USA)

2009

Wanderer in search of new skin

2009

Mother and Child

2009

Living Art in Action

2009

"The Actor"

2009

self portrait

2009

Anxiety transformed/power: Portrait of a Brother

2009

self portrait form the hospital 01

2009

Earth’s Connection with its Creations

2007-2008
mixed-medium