The creative process is a way of life of course, not just a way to make art.  It is necessary to find a home for all of the ideas bouncing around in my head—art is eventually the concrete evidence of a particular inspiration. The stuff that stirs my imagination requires me to keep honing skills and searching for new techniques and strategies.  These ideas are put in order and reshaped, working with hands & eyes together, into a particular image—ideas are given a home in paint, paper and ink.

Here are some sources of ideas and inspiration

a few favorite quotes...

Between the intitial idea and the finished piece lies a gulf we can see across, but never fully chart.  Bayles & Orland

...the soul never thinks without an image.  Aristotle

When we look at a particular work of northwest coast art and see the shape of it, we are only looking at its after-ife.  Its real life is the movement by which it got to be that shape.  Bill Reid, Haida carver

Truth is the freedom of letting things reveal themselves as they are--but, when anything is revealed, other things are concealed.  The best place to get a good glimpse of the truth is not in what we know but on the edge of what we know.  John Briggs quoting Martin Heidegger

Sometimes I see it and then paint it.  Other times I paint it and then see it.  Jasper Johns

I know that in my own work the best things are the things that just happened--images that were suddenly caught and that I hadn't anticipated ... I believe in a deeply ordered chaos and in the rules of chance.  Francis Bacon

Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.  Edgar Degas

When I can't work, or when I have a problem I immediately start to draw.  In order to disengage myself, to try to find a solution....  They are drawings that I do for myself: I don't do them for others... My drawings are purely functional.  Jean Tinguely

To see far is one thing; going there is another.  Constantin Brancusi

When your horse dies, get off.  Bayles and Orland

It may be a point of great pride to have a Van Gogh on the living room wall, but the prospect of having Van Gogh himself in the living room would put a great many devoted art lovers to rout.  Ben Shahn

I am Inspired by...

Books & Writers:

• Okakura Kakuzo: The Book of Tea
• James Elkins: What Painting Is
• John Briggs: Fire in theCrucible
• Shaun McNiff: Trust the Process
• Cennino Cennini: The Craftsman's Handbook
• Natalie Goldberg: Writing Down the Bones, Freeing the Writer Within
  
• Wendell Berry, poetry
  
• Mary Oliver, poetry
  
• Wassily Kandinsky: Concerning the Spiritual in Art
  
• Simon Schama: Rembrandt's Eyes
  
• Chaim Potok: My Name is Asher Lev
  
• Pearl Buck: The Good Earth
  
• Marcus Aurelius: Meditations
  

Also inspired by:

• road trips
• weather
• the changing of the seasons
• indigenous artwork
• nearly-true stories
• the Beatitudes
• color and texture
• parables
• secrets

I am Influenced by:

• Medieval Icons
• Illuminated Manuscripts
• Camille Pisarro
• Vincent Van Gogh
• Hokusai
• Hiroshige
• Bill Reid
• Juane Quick-To-See Smith
• Louise Nevelson
• Robert Rauschenberg
• Cave Paintings
• Fred Matchetanz

• the list goes on & on...

I am Searching for:

• a gypsy wagon to take me anywhere I'd want to go--check this off--I got it!
• unscattered time
• an impression in each National Park

In the works:

• Continuing the series Searching for Beauty in a Broken World
  
• Seasoned: painting the changing seasons
• Continuing the National Park Series along with a bit of traveling
• Exploring the idea of being invisible