XSFX Photo Gallery

Creating artwork, for me, has always been a total waking up to falling in love with color, shape, texture, and process. As my artistic inclinations began to emerge in childhood, a natural progression led to my exploring the inner sanctum of my deepest emotions and highly active imagination. The result was a prolific revelation of metaphorical, surrealistic, and expressionistic compositions.

For many years I favored more precise techniques. Learning how to render, I was trained in classical styles of drawing and painting. Eventually, the tides turned. I found myself becoming more playful and experimental with various mediums. Many a day, I cut and tear up dozens of old jeans and other raw materials and sit on the floor in the center of a large pile of scattered swatches. With a palette of oil paint tints and shades, I randomly fill each unprepped canvas with absolutely no preconceived notion. I simply permit myself the complete freedom to be fully present. The only expectation is to achieve contentment within the practice itself rather than controlling and predicting an outcome. I suppose I took all the science out of the art. It is art in, what I believe is, one of its most pure and primitive forms.

Days and weeks after these pieces are dry, I return to them, and, once again, cutting and tearing the abundance of colored fragments, I transpose my experiences, dreams, and feelings into symbolic collages that are meant to be figurative as well as interpretational. I have completed thousands of these collages in addition to working in other mediums and genres. Many of these collages are quite small, intentionally. I like the idea that not everyone has the space for or can afford a large painting or mural. These smaller works allow just about anyone to own a unique piece of art they connect with and are meant to bring inspiration to even the most modest or minimal person or environment. 

oil collage on denim

oil collage on denim

oil collage on denim

oil collage on denim

oil collage on denim

oil collage on canvas

oil collage on canvas

oil collage on denim

oil collage on denim

oil collage on denim

oil collage on denim

oil collage on denim

oil collage on canvas

Wondering what the meaning of it is in my work, and the snake is a mainstay in my work, I'll offer a brief description here about its powerful metaphor. A year after I moved to Maui and became divorced, I discovered Nichiren Buddhism. Spending twelve years studying and praying Nam Myoho Renge Kyo (power of the mystic law) I learned about how a huge part of this philosophy focuses on the power of positive thinking. Nichiren Buddhists can turn any negative into a positive and believe that all people have the potential to become enlightened in this lifetime! Nichiren Buddhists, although using no idolatry of any kind like statues of Buddha, as we believe that we all have "Buddha-nature" inside each one us, use the symbol of the lotus flower to show that from the mud lives and grows the exquisite lotus flower. My own twist on this philosophy has the snake signifying that the anti-venom is derived from the venom. Why would I do that you might wonder? During my tender years, before my life-saving kidney operation when I was seven years-old on Valentine's Day, 1977, I always had night terrors of snakes and spiders hatching out of millions of eggs all around me in every direction. Sometimes the snakes and spiders were as big as a building. Christians and other religions believe the symbology of the snake represents the going against god. Nothing could be further from the truth in my work. The snake is not god's fallen angel in my dreams or in my world, but quite the contrary. I learned later in life that shamans and other spiritualists call these visions, from my dreams, "initiation."

The terrifying images of snakes and spiders completely disappeared from my dreams after the surgery was successful! As I became ill again in my thirties, the nightmares returned. Rather than seek therapy, I discovered shamanism and studied consciousness and dream interpretation. The next ten years of shamanistic study, travel, and practice is what preceded a serendipitous finding of Nichiren Buddhism. Like many people who have suffered themselves, mentally or physically, they learn most about elixirs to help heal themselves. For me, that elixir is art.

The shaman builds bridges between the real and ideal, the unconscious and conscious, truth and illusion, dark and light, dream and reality, and are in total sync with their environments, particularly animals and nature or dreaming. My entire life I've sought to understand the purpose of suffering and the paths to joy. The snake represents making the best out of the worst situation. That is part of what my art is intended to do, and does unfailingly! It is also an underlying theme for the book I'm writing.

oil collage on canvas paper

oil collage on denim

oil collage  on raw canvas

oil collage on denim

oil collage on denim