- We are all searching for this mysterious connection that replenishes our souls or replenishes our attitudes, our sense of purpose.

And I think art does that for us.

I am from Illinois, the Midwest, a business major in college.

I wasn't too keen on joining the cubicle world, so I joined the Navy.

I right away, I'm stationed in Japan on a frigate.

We toured around much of the south of Southeast Asia during that time and it got introduced to a lot of things.

Of course, that young guys from Midwestern, you know, was gonna be new to them.

Then a couple years in the fleet and then joined the SEAL teams here on the East coast and spent another 26 years working in and out of here.

We did move to Germany, we moved to dc, we moved to Hawaii During that career, retired in 2014.

I'd always been kind of a doodler, so I kept sketching.

I was coming back from deployment or some trip or something one time and my wife got a six week class gift certificate.

And my first class was watercolors.

I took sketching classes and it was a great place to learn and it was local and accessible to me.

I got interested in oil painting and I took the first class with Charles Ello and Kenneth Bain.

They taught me, basically taught me how to paint the techniques and, and, and how to express yourself and, and mixing colors and all those things.

And then I was able to paint with some other people internationally painted while I was in the Philippines, in Kenya and in Nairobi.

I've had those kinds of experiences overseas, engaging with artists that I think had an influence on how I, how I view things.

Other inspirations come from, from reading or from art history, that sort of thing.

I read a couple books on the Bauhaus movement in Germany that became a, a source of inspiration.

I have a couple paintings in progress from just those notions in those images about representing human emotion, representing human thought in abstract ways.

And it took me a long time to get not just acquainted with abstract or modernist movements, but also to appreciate what they were trying to do.

And so I think there is where art really becomes powerful when you, when you step onto something or look into something or experience something that's unexpected.

Art has, its very practical uses in both education and, and I think just in a daily experience of making our brains work differently.

After I retired, I started teaching a course for the Department of Defense, senior military officers and diplomats and then government officials.

And in that course we draw from artistic experiences to kind of move us from one spot to another.

When you engage something that's unexpected, your brain lights up, your brain starts to go, I've gotta search for ideas or memories or something, or knowledge that allows me to deal with this.

And it's often stuff they haven't dealt with much, certainly not in their military training.

And so I think the use of that stuff is very, very powerful.

And moving them into a place where they're better prepared for new ideas, better prepared to think about the work that they do in new ways in the military, even in, in special operations, you, you find fantastic artists, a lot of great riders, a lot of great thinkers.

And so it's, I think, lost on the public sometimes.

The creative talent that's resident in the military, 'cause it's common outside the military, it's common inside the military.

- New publish what age?

Four, three or four.

- Yeah.

My earliest memory of her painting with me was jumping right into easel canvas, oil paint.

- I definitely take on like his realism and getting details right and proportions and that kind of stuff and my art.

But I think my passion for it really started in high school and that's when I realized, hey, I kind of have some skills and talent in art.

And also I just, the connection that I had with my dad, you know, like painting when I was growing up with him.

And that just really, I think made it a lot stronger.

My dad taught me, well probably when I was in middle school, how to make origami cranes.

And that kind of inspired me to make one of my art pieces.

In high school - I was deployed in Southeast Asia, we'd gone to Korea and then in Pusan I went to a furniture store to buy a futon and there was a group of seven or eight South Koreans.

All they were doing was, was folding cranes and they were handing me squares of paper and we were pretty insistent about me sitting and learn how to, to fold a crane.

And so I, I walked out of there with a nice futon and ability to fold cranes.

Folding the cranes was especially satisfying for me because we as a family, we almost of us can do it.

And certainly the kids have appreciated, I think learning to do it.

And, and Kate's been probably the most active over over time of, of folding cranes.

- If I'm sitting in my dorm or in my room, I'll just kind of bored, want little activity to do.

I'll just fold some birds and just kinda have them laying around or give them as presents to people.

- For me, it's not art until it's shared.

Once people see it, that's when it's doing the job for which it was intended.

As I always say, that's the point they have to see.

It certainly values in museums and galleries, that's a whole universe in itself, but there's also fantastic value and just having art out there where people are working and living every day.

So I've enjoyed that.

Yeah, there's this idea that we feel this incredible urge to connect and to belong somewhere.

And I think that plays out in, in, in very positive ways and sometimes in very negative ways in, in society.

This painting here of wild geese and then the painting over at Taste called We the People directly inspired by this poem, by Mary Oliver called Wild Geese.

- You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Tell me about despair yours.

And I'll tell you mine.

Meanwhile, the world goes on, meanwhile, the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile, the wild geese high in the clean blue air are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese.

Harsh and exciting over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

- These paintings were around this idea of community and this idea of of belonging and our desire to connect with each other.

And I think that's a not only a healthy thing for us to, to recognize that that's important, but it's something we should work toward.

'cause that's a very satisfying and very fulfilling thing for us to do.

And I think a very healthy thing for us to do is, is to, is to pursue that notion of connection, of belonging and community.