Still Life

Most of my still pieces are flowers and food. I enjoy working with the colors and textures especially because both food and flowers often have strong colors and definite textures that stimulate other senses automatically.

Animal Portraits

I have to admit this is my big love. I am crazy about animals, especially those I know personally. Their poses are always natural and these portraits offer so much variety of colors and textures.

Wildlife

There's something magical about getting a glimpse of wildlife when you are out on a trail. Painting or drawing wildlife offers such a wide variety of textures to practice. I love drawing raptors, the patterns on their feathers are especially interesting to plot.

Portraits

I think human portraits are most difficult of the subject matters. Sometimes when I look at a photo of someone I know I think "that's not how they really look." It seems to me that some of us see people with our emotional eyes more than our literal eyes-that is, how we feel around and toward that personality. This is in part why some of my portraits are not facing the viewer. Who they are is not so attached to how their face appears-more about what they are doing and their posture.

Places

My favorite landscapes are really simple ones, usually open fields. For me those signify the delight of anticipated discoveries because I have spent countless afternoons with Andy exploring the Colorado plains with no particular destiny. That is real leisure.

Illustrations

My illustrations usually are for kid's books or media and I am glad. It affords me license to use all of the creativity I can muster and it also lets me elaborate on the personalities of animals.