Park Bench is a nostalgic piece about the common gathering places in our cities and towns. I intended this piece to feel warm and light, a sort of snapshot from a time in the last century. That said, although times and styles change, our public green spaces continue to provide places of recreation, congregation and play. The bird flying across the face of the canvas isintended to enhance and focus the overall light and whimsical feel of the piece, while the muted palate of the color scheme evokes a more constrained time.

American Fabric is a work of art about immigration. This is, of course, a major issue in American society right now, one fraught with emotion, division and acrimony. I wanted to frame the issue in a more positive light, so chose to create 35 portraits of immigrants to this country from around the world. I chose those people most in need of the American dream, coming from countries too poor or torn by war to support them. All of the portraits are looking left, back to where they came, but when all of the paintings come together, a common image binds them together into a cohesive whole. I chose the image of Abraham Lincoln to be the common thread between them, because I believe that few people in American history have believed as strongly as Lincoln that the need for human dignity must be at the root of this country. A free and diverse population is what makes America unique in the world, and lies at the strength of our country. When our leaders turn their backs on that diversity, and deny those who believe in America as a place where a better life can be found, it weakens our country, and darkens the light of the American experience and our basic ideals as a people.

Kauai is one of those places that hold special meaning for myself and my family. After we returned the last time from a trip to the island, I conceived of these four pieces, each meant as an impression of an aspect of the place, rather than as a narrative image. Each piece is specific to a member of our family - the pineapple for my wife, the rooster for my son, the surfer for my daughter, and the boar for myself. Go to my Series page to learn why each piece is specific to each of us, and to get more detail and information on each of the four pieces in this series here.

American Buffalo is a meditation on the sometimes destructive nature of the American experience. The central image of the iconic plains bison is intended to be symbolic of the destruction of native species and non-European people in American history. The men depicted on the suspended canvasses are the Elaine 12, twelve black men who were arrested, tried and executed after the Elaine race riot in Arkansas in 1918, in which up to 600 black men were killed. People of color were not allowed to serve on juries in Elaine at that time, although blacks outnumbered whites in this area of Arkansas by a ten to one ratio. This event is considered by many historians as one of the most egregious examples injustice in American history, although it is an event that is largely forgotten today.

New Orleans is possibly my favorite place on earth, a city that I return to again and again, a city which inspires and excites me with it’s beauty, history and culture. King Cake is intended as an impression, rather than a representation, of the cities’ unique Mardi Gras and culinary traditions. The King Cake babies are stitched over the names of many of my favorite foods and drinks from New Orleans. The boy is perched on a fire hydrant to get a better view of the parades, and no doubt looking forward to eating some King Cake during the Mardi Gras season.

The Crowd Series is composed of 12 works of art that contemplate two seemingly opposing facets of life in public - Strife and Secret. Strife can take on the overt form of people The works are displayed in alteration between the two themes, but each piece is a stand-alone work of art in it’s own right. To see more views and details of the work check out my Series page here.

Street Parade is an homage to the unique New Orleans traditional Second Line brass band parades. It is also intended to be an artistic impression of the celebration and joy that those parades represent - the joy of marriage, the celebrations of birthdays, and the unique New Orleans funeral processions. The pendant light casts a warm glow of the two brass players, and shines through the woman dancing in front, the music casting a beating rhythm of happiness fro all to experience.

Originally inspired by the circular and square patterns of the irrigated fields as seen from the air, this piece is about the settlement of the American West. The image of the long horn steer symbolizes how the rise of the cattle industry developed along with the cultivation of the fields, and the crows elevated away from the canvas, along with the block and pulley, represent the darker aspect of European settlement - the dispersion and subjugation of the native people, now tenants on the ancestral land that they once stewarded.

The Identity Series, comprised of two canvasses, is about how we define ourselves by the personal charms and totems thatwe collect. Each portrait is constructed with 25 canvasses hung together, each one painted in varying layers of color, with a small charm attached. Go to my Series page to see more views, details and explanations of the pieces here.

 The bombing of a concert in Manchester, England earlier this summer really affected me, as the attack appeared to target children and young women. My daughter, who is 11, would gladly have attended that concert, and the thought of any harm coming to her breaks my heart. The bee imagery references the city of Manchester, which is known in England as the Bee City, and the bee became the symbol, across the city, of hope and defiance in the face of terror. The guitar on the t-shirt represents Manchesters’ reputation as a center of music in England, and the shirt itself is one of my son’s, which has always been one of my favorites and which he has outgrown. There were 22 people killed in the bombing, and each person is represented by a glass bead hanging alongside the light, which for me illuminates the human cost of the tragedy and gives hope for the future.

Sidewalk is a sort of homage to the morning commute, and the diversity of people all going in a single direction. The crowd moves fluidly in sync, but the individals are not connected, only overlap, each with his or her own agenda and attitude, whether they be walking with purpose and intiative, or seemingly sleepwalking through the day. Against this backdrop, the piece is also about those who move upstream, away from the crowds. A few years back I became a stay-at-home dad, and this piece is almost nostalgic for me, a throw back to a time both purposeful and maddening.

The circus series of paintings were created in conjunction with the free-standing Bedlam sculpture. I wanted to take three of the images from that piece and flesh them out a little bit more, adding details to each to get closer to how I feel about each image, and also exploring a slightly different color palate for this series. Go to my Series page to get more detail and information on each of the three pieces in this series here.

 7 years ago, when my wife and I travelled to Belize for our anniversary, Tropical Storm Alex blew over our little island, before developing into Hurricane Alex in the Gulf of Mexico. I’ve been wanting to do a piece about Belize, and to pay homage to the wonderful local art and traditions of the region, so developed this piece as an homage to the country and a remembrance of the storm. I drew the colors for the piece from the toy lizards sewn to the canvas, and the large skull image is a reference to the deadly natures of tropical storms and hurricanes, as well as a nod to the sugar skull artwork, associated with Day of the Dead, that you see all over the island.

Nectar is another of the first new pieces created for the Menagerie body of work. The colorful and energetic background is offset by the black washed hummingbird. The spoons reference a spoon full of sugar, but also are intended as an acknowledgement of the issues of addiction. The hanging bags around the lights hold silver charms and needles.

I wanted to create a piece about how children would stock an apothecary, given the ability to put in whatever they chose. As a parent of two kids, I know that glass beads, toy alligators, or worry dolls can all be employed to make a child feel better. The children in the central image behind the apothecary are playing ring-around-the-rosy, the old traditional English rhyme about the black plague, and the overall structure of the piece is intended to mirror the red cross.

Hateful Intent is about the ugly face of hate and intolerence that often crops up in American life. In every society there are those that seek strife, that choose to vent their hate, that are filled with a desire to harm those who are different, disagree or displease them. Unfortunately, there is this darkness that hides in the light of life, not always visible, but consistently present. Ignoring it does not make it go away, and Hateful Intent is intended to give face to this intolerance.To resist it is to acknowledge and confront it, to understand it’s form and drive it away.

The Work Series is a collection of three canvasses depicting issues of states of work from the last century. Both Factory Girls and Teenage Sharecroppers depict children who were forced to work at the turn of the century to support their families. The three men in Idle Hands are out of work men in Louisiana during the thirties, at the depths of the Great Depression. Go to my Series page to get more detail and information on each of the three pieces in this series here.

 Boy is a companion piece to “Girl”, a work that I created for my daughter. Boy features repeated images of my son, interspersed with palm trees, from a trip we took to Hawaii last year. I wanted to capture the energy and somewhat kinetic nature of the boy, so I opened up the color palate a bit and conceived the idea of alternating layers of canvas, hopefully getting at the joyous essence of what it’s like to be a seven year old boy. He is both on the beach, and the beach is in him.

The central image of this piece is of a meeting between Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin in Yalta, on the black sea in the former USSR, toward the end of World War Two. The bomber image on the small canvasses is offset by the small dove, a variation of the carrot and the stick, representing the conflicting impulses that are key to restoring order from conflict. The countries represented at the meeting, although pursuing varying and conflicting agendas before the war, needed to find a way to at least temporarily put differences aside to achieve a greater good, defeating a tyrant and a horrendous regime.

My daughter recently received a t-shirt with a picture of Princess Leia and the phrase “A Woman’s Place is in the Resistance”, and that image struck me as similar to the central image of this piece, a female member of the IRA in Belfast from the 1970s. The treatment of the painted surface is intended to reference stained glass, an acknowledgment of the religious as well as secular nature of the conflict in Northern Ireland. Hanging in front of the central canvas are images of peace - angels holding wreaths - with quotes from James Joyce superimposed in front. The violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland have thankfully given way to negotiated peace between the British and the Irish people, and to a clearer understanding and tolerance between the Protestants and Catholics in Irish society.

Pub is a moment in time, a snapshot of two men engaged in conversation. The pub is an integral facet of Irish society, a place to meet friends and hear music. The Irish Tin Whistles stitched to the front of the canvas, seen through three of the glass panes, is in honor of the important place that music plays in the Irish pub culture, and in traditional Irish society as a whole. The window provides an intimate glimpse into the conversation, and frames the friendship of the two men.

Remedy is a piece about the displaced and dispossessed in America, and the support, or lack there of for them. As homelessness and addiction continue to perpetually plague American society, the safety net that we build is constantly being stretched thin, torn apart, or discarded completely, especially in today’s political climate. It feels, at times, the solutions to real and serious problem are little more than panaceas and worry dolls. I wanted to depict this state of affairs in the piece, but also to show that at heart, within, there is joy to be found and nurtured. No person need be a lost cause, there can be a way to help those that need it most, but the solutions, although not easy, need to be developed and pursued, not discarded because the political climate will allow it.

Non-conformist was originally a study for a larger work of art, to work out some the formatting and aesthetic issues of the piece. I felt that it was so successful, and I enjoyed the concept so much, that it developed into a fully formed piece of it’s own. It is a study about people who go their own way. The imagery in this piece focuses on those individuals who choose to remove themselves from the crowd, who find their place outside of societal norms, and who shout into the din of conformity.

 This piece was inspired by a girl who is among the crowd of children in a piece called “Fence” that I created about immigrants on Ellis Island. A face in the crowd, she reminded me of my daughter, and became a sort of personalization of the immigrant story for myself. A quiet piece, with muted colors and a simple subject, this piece is intended to be more of a contemplation than a narrative work. Although the repeated imagery represents for me the commonality of the children seeking refuge in this country, this piece is really a contemplation of this fathers’ love for his daughter.

I originally created Hive a few years back as a free-standing floor piece, but over time it’s tendency to fall over, coupled with my desire to add a light element to the piece, persuaded me to convert it to a work of art that can hang on a wall. It is an abstraction of a hive, and the bee image is something that I constantly return to, as I find them both fascinating and a little bit frightening.

Highland Cow is a piece about Scotland, the land of my ancestors.  I wanted to create an image representing the Scottish Highlands, known for it’s wild, barren hills, as well as it’s wild, slightly barbarous past.  It’s a big land, so I wanted a big cow, and so the image is life-size.  The colors in the background are reminiscent of the heather and wild grasses that cover the landscape.  The history of the place is represented by the central image of the Scottish fiddle, as well as the bows and arrows.

 Summertime is a whimsical nostalgic piece about childhood summers. Dragonflies and soda caps danglevmobile-like in front of a triptych of canvasses depicting a child’s summer birthday picnic from the 1950s.  Suspended in front of the central canvas from a flag pole bracket is a mason jar, commonly used to collect fireflies on a warm July evening.

Napoleon Bees and Roosters Napoleon are companion pieces to the larger piece David, all about Napoleon and the French Revolution.  Both pieces are acrylic on canvas, pine frame, steel hardware, wire and silver buttons.

Napoleon Bees and Roosters Napoleon are companion pieces to the larger piece David, all about Napoleon and the French Revolution.  Both pieces are acrylic on canvas, pine frame, steel hardware, wire and silver buttons.

I wanted to create a work about the cultural diversity of America with Flag, but also about how, in our current time, the nature of being an American also represents a loss of personal identity – the sacrifice of self for the whole, whether it is desired by the individual, or not. To this extent, the various portraits of people are superimposed by the stars, and each individual is bolted to the overall frame of the flag. Copper wire is stretched in front and between the portraits, representative of the stripes on the American flag, but also hinting at the loss of individuality inherent in the binding of a nation. While diversity is celebrated in our shared history and ideals, the reality of today’s America often means that being different from the majority is not rewarded, often punished, and a significantly more difficult road to take.

American Alligator is a piece about Louisiana, and a meditation about how the great Mississippi bayous, and our wilder natures, have barely been tamed. The life size alligator lies before a canvas gridded with black thread and stars, meant to symbolize the net of order thrown across an untamed wilderness by modern civilization. String dolls, often associated with voodoo rituals, are stitched to the canvas over small lizards, and a typical bayou house lies in the middle, circled by the alligator. The trouble light that is suspended in front brings light and clarity to the center of the piece, while being surrounded by all that is wild.

This piece is meant as a big thank you to the town of Lynden, which hosted to concurrent shows of my work at both the Jansen Art Center and the Beautiful Inn at Lynden.  Acrylic on Canvas, pine frame, tin stars, faucet handles, wire and paint brushes.

The three pieces in the Cure For What Ails You series are a unique nostalgic work of art about music and culture in southern Louisiana. The dancing couple is superimposed with an oral history from the music clubs of New Orleans from the 30s and 40s, and the glass bottles that hang in front reference the dual cures of apothecary and voodoo. In a time of systematic racism, a musical tradition of identity and inclusion blossomed and flourished in the clubs and halls of the city.

The three pieces in the Cure For What Ails You series served as studies for the larger Remedy work, focusing in this instance on the mysterious power of music, dance and joy.  Acrylic on canvas, wire, cotton thread, glass vials, worry dolls and pins.

The three pieces in the Cure For What Ails You series served as studies for the larger Remedy work, focusing in this instance on the mysterious power of music, dance and joy.  Acrylic on canvas, wire, cotton thread, glass vials, worry dolls and pins.

Fence was inspired by the immigration debate in this country, and the focus on whatthe people are who want to move here, rather than on whothey are. The image of the piece is taken from a 100 year old photograph from Ellis Island of people waiting to be processed into America. The primarily black and white focus of the palate is inspired by the beautiful anonymity of old photos. The wire stretched in front is, of course, the fence that keeps them in, or keeps them out, depending on your perspective, and hopefully gives rise to the question “Who would we be now if we erected a wall to keep them out then?”

This last spring we experience a mysterious plague of flies at our house, and I conceived of a piece called Plague of Flies. While developing the ideas it occurred to me that nobody really wants to see a piece of artwork about house flies, so decided to scrap the idea. Still, the great New Orleans Mardi Gras song “Shoo Fly” kept throbbing in my head, and I decided that I needed to change tacks, keep the flies, but focus on the song. The repeated imagery of the flies, with the trumpets and frog lids stitched on top, are meant to echo the great repeated call and response of the song, always the same, but always a little different.

Porch is a nostalgic piece about rural Louisiana, one of my favorite places. The six suspended canvasses depicting various moths features fragments from Hawthorn’s epic poem “Evangeline”, about the migration of the Acadians to Louisiana. The central canvas depicts an image of two of the cajun children, washed out with time, superimposed by an image of an accordion and an old-style Edison bulb. The construction of this piece, complete with the torn cloth and handing wire, is meant to evoke a cabin on the bayou, nearly forgotten but seemingly timeless.

I wanted to do a piece about pirates for my kids, with all of the great imagery that comes with it, but when I started developing the piece I kept removing color from the palate until it became a primarily white and grey work of art, thus a ghost ship. The pennies that are attached to the piece were pounded flat until all definition was removed, and then bathed in a mixture of salt and vinegar, so that they will oxidize and turn black during the lifetime of the piece.

Speakeasy came about whole investigating the jazz age in the 1920s. There is such a strong set of images that come to mind when thinking of the time, from gangsters to band leaders, from flappers to tommy guns. Jazz was born in this time, and became the sound of all that was illicit, illegal and exciting of these legendary underground clubs.

Queen Bee was inspired by the shape and color of the lightbulb that hangs in front of the piece, and was the first wall piece to feature light. I have long been intrigued by the idea of bringing light into my artwork, and traditionally have used it as backlighting for my floor pieces, but this time wanted to feature it front and center. The beauty of the bulb, and the wonderful color of the light, enhances and gives life to the great queen bee that lies behind.

 While working on a piece about British Punk Rock from the late 70s, and my misspent youth listening to it, I became somewhat surprisingly nostalgic for the Cold War. It seems to me that, unlike now, we always knew who the enemy was supposed to be, and that they would most likely never actually send any nuclear weapons our way. The Cold war may not have been a particularly fun time in our history, but there is now a certain romanticism associated with the espionage and spy games. While developing Cold War Romance, and thinking of imagery from that time, I wanted to stay away from missiles, bomb shelters, and all of the usual trappings of the cold war. I decided on a lighter piece, featuring the romantic couples from both sides featured, and rusted stars stitched over the top.

A personally nostalgic piece that was generated by a visit to the Museum of Flight. I was inspired by the planes suspended from the ceiling at the museum to create a mobile of plane paintings that would hang free. The spoons attached to the piece are in reference to the first thing that my wife and I ever bought together for our newly moved-in home, a wind chime constructed of bent spoons (which we still have).  The writing behind the planes and spoons are snippets of prose from all of my favorite children’s books that my children will not longer let me read to them.

Windstorm is based on the November 2015 windstorm in Spokane that knocked out our power for a week during one of the worst cold spells of the year.  The chaos of the storm and the following debris were offset by the absolute darkness and complete calm the following day.  I tried to capture these two disparate senses in the piece, while also echoing the darkened windows with the candles for light and tree branches strewn in front.  It was a terrible and wonderful storm that my children will remember possibly their entire lives.

Expression is a small take on the freedom of expression.  The various portraits are stitched together with various buttons, each unique, as are the statements written across and the portraits themselves.  The statements written on the canvas are often mundane, but the freedom to make them is a foundation of American society.