In his book, "The Mission of Art", Alex Gray says that artists are responsible for the energy of the things that they bring into manifestation. The images I create are fed by my dreams, shamanic work, and a deep desire to bring resolution to things that seem out of balance in the world. The spark will often come from a word or expression that lodges in my mind or some weird twist in a personal relationship, but once I begin work on a piece, a deeper metaphor for issues at the core of human nature usually becomes evident.

For me, art is way to embrace emotional and intellectual complexity. Words are so woefully inadequate to express the layers and nuances of life. The visual vocabulary is richer, wider, fuller in every way. Each layer of representation or abstraction adds depth to the communication. Color, value, process, medium, dimensionality are all tools at the disposal of the artist. Whenever I am overwhelmed by an idea or a feeling, my immediate and visceral response is in the form of images. The words come much later. For me, being an artist is about choosing to communicate in my native language.

Growing up in an artistic household (my mother was a painter, my father, a writer), creative expression was a major part of our daily lives. My earliest memories revolve around afternoons spent painting or drawing with my mother. Art supplies were always readily available to me and any mess was acceptable as long as it was creative. I was lucky, also, in that I grew up outside the United States where access to TV and movies was limited and I had to make my own entertainment. As a result, I spent a good deal of my childhood in the "La-La Land" of my imagination and in spite of the best efforts of a determined series of educators, I've never really returned.

My love of printmaking developed early. While we lived in Japan, my parents amassed a rather impressive collection of woodblock prints. Among their collection was a small accordion fold book that showed each step of a multi-plate print. I spent hours flipping through that book and studying the changes to the image as each successive color was added. Long before I was old enough to be turned loose with woodcarving tools, I began my printmaking career by cutting designs into potatoes with a butter knife and printing those.

I started working with the computer as an artistic tool in the early '90's. Prior to that time, much of the work I was doing in drawing, painting and collage featured layered and blended imagery, so the transition to computer photomontage was a no-brainer. I quickly grew bored with the slick look of digital prints on paper and began experimenting with ways of combining digital and traditional printing techniques (Tradigital?). My current work combines traditional and contemporary printing techniques with a broad range of industrial materials like Spackle, Tyvek and landscape cloth in addition to more typical art materials like canvas and acrylics.