1978 Born, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A 1996-1998 Studied Graphic Design at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh 1999 Studied for BFA in Painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art (until 2002), Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A. 2002 Hessler Street Gallery (until 2003) manager, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.A. Began teaching Drawing and Painting at the Beck Center for the Arts, Lakewood, Ohio, U.S.A (until 2008) 2003 Began working as Art Director for The Ahola Corporation designing all products and exhibited work of Cleveland area artists, Brecksville, Ohio, U.S.A. (Until 2006) 2007 Worked as Gallery Manager for the Cleveland Artists Foundation (until 2008) 2008-Present Married photographer Laura Bell Studying for MFA (painting, minor in printmaking) at the Edinburgh College of Art, Edinburgh, U.K. Statement:My goal and challenge as an artist is to concretize my general sense of life into a representation of reality—a drawing or painting—for the purposes of expression and self-exploration. My images depict fictional realities, but are non-fiction accounts of my understanding of the nature of reality—a reality that I believe to be elegant, purposeful, beautiful and highly ordered with an underlying violence and severity. My paintings and drawings are built around an abstract structure, which is the primary vehicle of the work’s expressive quality. The reality upon which these abstractions are imposed are the people, animals and places around me such as my loved ones, friends, students, pets and the place I live. Realism for me is a thin veneer of details, some of which are interchangeable, but the abstract structure consists of essentials and, at my work’s best, nothing can be removed or altered without damaging the effect of the whole. I seek a realism that is believable despite the fact that in my work, realism is subservient to the abstract structure. In my best work the two are integrated seamlessly. While no large elements in my work are spontaneous, I like to give the illusion of spontaneity through paint that has been streaked, splattered or smeared with thick brushwork or by lines that are long and drawn rapidly. Just like the abstract shapes, I try to integrate these marks into the represented reality. While integrating elements of realism into my work necessarily compromises the potency of the abstraction, I seek to compromise it as little as possible. The physical limitations of the surface and the paint are things I strive to push the limits of. I want these material limitations to hold a maximum of expressiveness, while maintaining realism and structural integrity. The shape of the painting or drawing surface plays an important role when arranging the compositional elements. I gravitate towards a vertical format, to give the image a more majestic and graceful feeling. I have no interest in capturing the individual character of the people and things I use as subjects, but rather, I seek to imbue everything I paint or draw with my own character. Regarding influences, some of the artists I have found to be rich with artistic insight and expressive, purposefully used forms include Johannes Vermeer, John Singer Sargent, Anthony Van Dyck, Albert Pinkham Ryder, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Francis Bacon, Giambattista Tiepolo, and Lucian Freud. Fiction writers such as Ayn Rand, J.D. Salinger and Victor Hugo are also important to me in that I see my work performing the same function as a fiction novel. AFRICAN ANTELOPE GIRL IN A FIELD OF BLUE