What I do is I just wake up and paint.

Being a painter and living and working around your work like I do.

I live and work here in this studio.

Living around it, staying around it keeps me.

Keeps me inspired.

And that's.

That's the kind of atmosphere I like to be in.

Your creative mind is always turned on when you're around the works.

The atmosphere of my studio, with all the work that I have around me, is very inspiring.

There's times I'll look down at my floor and get a painting idea.

Having everything, all your tools and all your trade right there is, is very inspiring to me.

My whole painting background is, in watercolor, so I tend to look at paint very transparent.

I do have opaque areas in my canvas, but I still look at color and my canvases as if they're just layers of thin color.

Just like a watercolor, I would approach a painting.

I do have a charcoal sketch that I start with.

I do have a particular pattern and a block that I'm interested in.

So I don't just have, just a solid white canvas that I'm painting on.

So some of those areas will stay in the final, piece.

And some of them obviously are getting covered up, but that's just an underpainting that I've always kind of liked.

I've always liked that, watercolor acrylic approach to painting.

Just gives me an extra dimension that I can, play with or cover it up.

To scratch and back through, also helps bring that underpainting back to the surface.

So some of some of that stays and then they gets scratched back out.

And then as I brush back over it When I was in school I would, look at the chalkboard and there was always something underneath the chalkboard that the teacher just erased off.

And I always disliked that look of that.

The way that chalkboard look, I always wanted to paint like like that drawing, the drawing and the doodles on the chalkboard.

So when you look into my paintings, you'll almost want to see a letter shape.

And some of it, some of it's more pronounced than others.

But but again, it's that chalkboard, kind of a, dimension to my surface that, that I'm really after.

It's already starting to come around.

I teach art and, have been doing it for 12 years, but this is looking good.

I like I like all that up there.

Probably need more paint.

Yeah, that's too thin.

You just seem so.

That kind of thick and thin.

Look there.

First thing I said to him when I walked in that.

Well, I said, I've never taught before.

And you should have seen their faces.

Their faces.

What do we get ourselves into?

But, you know, I told them, I said, I want to teach you all the way I learned myself.

I learned by watching artists work.

So I said, what we're going to do is I'm going to be a participating painter right along with you all know this love.

Go that live.

Bring this down.

I learned from artists that were willing to share their ideas and share their techniques.

And so I knew for me to be a good teacher, I had to be able to let go and to show these students my techniques.

He's real good at showing us how the value differences and paintings and oh, how to look at the whole picture and not just kind of get down on one little detail.

He's really encouraging me to harness them.

Being a teacher has been a lot of fun.

I've.

I've enjoyed it.

The ladies are, that are a great group of ladies.

We have a lot of fun.

It's, it's a studious group.

I have three classes, and they're all a little different.

And, personality.

Of course, I tell them, each of them, that they're all the best.

Course, there's no question that they are learning how to paint.

Now, some of them may only be able to reach a certain skill level, and that's that.

But you don't have to know every skill under the sun to be a good painter and enjoy yourself.

And so I just kind of got hooked on this.

And then I started this out about 14 years ago and I wouldn't miss a week.

I love it when I see them coming in working and painting and having fun, and that makes it fun for me.

And these probably these three right here, the the ones that are probably sticking the feathers up out away from your pot as I'm teaching and I'm showing them different techniques, they probably don't know it, but I'm also learning a different technique myself.

So a lot of times they'll want me to paint like, I'm Monet, you know?

They'll want me to do a pointillism piece.

Well, that's something I may never do myself, but I do find that when I exercise and do them, show them other techniques that that it does kind of sometimes ends up creeping into my own work.

But I don't always know exactly where it's going when I start.

So I. I am challenging myself as a painter each time I step in front of the canvas.

And that's that's exciting.

If I knew what the painting was supposed to look like before I started, then it would just be an exercise in technique.

I've just always liked painting from my subconscious and just letting it, letting something happen.

It challenges me as an artist and as a painter creatively, to paint this way.

People have always ask me said, well, where do you come up with your ideas?

I said, well, I don't, I don't necessarily know how to turn it off.

And as I'm working on this painting, I'm also thinking about my next painting.

So there's there's areas in here that may very well turn in to another piece.

I probably made this technique look easy, but it's not.

It took me a long time to learn how to apply this particular type of technique.

All my years of painting and painting in different styles and different looks, is a cumulative effect as to why I'm painting now.

A lot of people will look at me, look at my work, and they'll say, well, you know, he must paint this way just because he can't paint realistically.

And I'm skilled enough to do other realistic and other styles of work, but that doesn't challenge me artistically enough.

So this is really where I really love to be.

I've always had my own style.

I've never really followed any trends.

I've always just stuck with what I really love to do.

And and it's always been fun for me.

I really put my shadows in there.

I'll get my airbrush out and and we'll put some shadows in there and get in the flow.

My early paintings that I worked on in high school and college were very abstract, but they weren't near as nonobjective as what I'm doing now.

Abstract art in my mind is, work that, still represents something, but then which is meant to be nonobjective work or objective work.

Objective art is art that, the viewer can see nonobjective it means that there's not an object in the artwork that you can actually say, okay, I know exactly what that is.

I kind of consider my, my art on the nonobjective side of art.

But I think as you see my paintings, you will see objects that you will want to think that they're something, but they're not quite something.

So I kind of teeter on that edge of nonobjective and objective art.

I want my viewers to stay and look at my pieces for a while.

I figure I've put my time and effort into it.

It's time for the viewer to put some time and effort into it as well.

Art's kind of a fragile medium.

I mean, it's sort of a fragile part of a person.

Painting for me is as in my heart and soul, and it's the one thing that nobody can ever take away from me because it's I would do it if I never sold another painting.

Of course, I love I love the fact that I can make a living at selling my work.

But if if it all of a sudden stopped, I would still continue to paint.

It's something I've done all my life, and it's the most joy that I can experience.