(soft music) - I always knew I wanted to be an artist.

I never had my fireman stage or anything like that.

I didn't actually know what being an artist was, though.

I didn't know anyone who was an artist growing up.

But I did know that drawing things that I saw or I felt was what made me feel most alive.

Even though I didn't grow up with people who consider themselves artists, I did grow up surrounded by lots of craftsmen, people who wanted to make things by hand and people who wanted to make things beautiful.

The craftsman knows where his end goal is going to be.

Making something that's utilitarian, you know what it's gonna look like at the end.

And I think the artist, while you have an idea of where you're going to go, if I knew what it was going to look like when I started, I wouldn't do it.

Or I think I know what I want to do when I begin.

But along that journey of making the painting or drawing or print, it always changes in an unexpected way.

That's really what's exciting about it for me.

I've been at William and Mary since 201.

The two areas that I teach primarily are printmaking and life drawing.

What you're really trying to teach maybe is an awareness of visual acuity, to get people to look at things, to be visually in tune and visually aware.

One of the things that always comes up in life drawing, for instance, is the shock of actually looking at something.

We make assumptions constantly about visual phenomenon.

That's the way we're able to get through the world.

But to take that time to slow down and really look at something specifically and try to see what's really there without a preconceived notion is a big thing that I think my students get out of visual arts and it's something that is applicable to many other aspects of their life.

Making or viewing art is really an act of empathy.

You know, you can't be in figure drawing for a whole semester and look at other figures and contemplate them without thinking about what it means to be human.

I don't think that's possible.

And I think maybe particularly at a liberal arts school, that's sort of the secret ingredient to arts education.

That's something that isn't necessarily spelled out on the syllabus that I hope all of my students get.

I knew I wanted to be a figurative artist.

You know, when I think about things that I wanted to look at, it was always the figure.

I was a little kid who was always sort of open-mouth looking at anything I was interested in, and my grandmother was always telling me to stop staring at people.

'Cause I was always doing that whenever I saw someone who was interesting.

My work, both in painting and printmaking, is really based in direct observation.

So typically when I work, I'm standing right in front of it.

I'm having a direct interaction with that.

Nothing gives me that surprise that, that shock of recognition where something is there that I hadn't imagined before the way that direct observation does and that's why it's really held my attention.

That representation of the figure, of the human condition, of these universal truths that we all have, that's really the thing that has sustained me, that keeps me going back again and again.

(soft music) I think it's that interaction with the person too.

It's not only that making it on the canvas or making on the paper or the etching plate, but it's that conversation with that person.

That slow unfurling of meaning through looking, through talking with them, and contemplating them, that's really kept me interested.

That's what keeps me going and keeps me coming back.

When you make artwork for decades, it has to be an obsession.

It has to be something that you're willing to put hours and hours on by yourself.

When I think of experiences that all humans have, births, the knowledge of their own mortality, search for meaning in life, want of companionship, anxiety, these are things that all of us share regardless of who we are in the world.

I always want that to be there.

When I think of how to show that, I think of it as being as specific as possible to my own.

I believe that you get the universal through the specific, that idea of having someone or something right in front of you and investigating that firsthand and being as specific as you can about it.

When I think about people viewing my art, I would hope that they would take the time to slow down like I have to really look at that person being portrayed and maybe see the shared humanity in it.

To look at a portrait or a figure, and to realize that they're not alone.

That someone else thought the way that I feel, that someone else had that shared experience.

I think that art at its highest level does that.

That's what I'm aiming for through trying to be really specific to talk about those universal experiences that we might all have.

(soft music)