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A thread of my art.
I started painting in 2015.
I started painting in 2015.
I started out in acrylic, but when i found oil paint i never went back. Most of my first year paintings i gave away for free in art drops around Pittsburgh.
Painting was a way for me to feel a little less lost in the world i was in. I still stand by the statement that at 20 years old, painting saved my life
From 2015-2017 i created 100+ paintings. i only have 2 left from this time period which is a really bittersweet feeling to me.
During this time i was figuring a lot of personal things out, so i looked to the more prominent figures who were inspiring me to paint them. Color use in my paintings was always highly intuitive and playful.
2015-2017 included many collaborations with @JazzbIues that still inform my work to this very day, (more to come in the future) and a collab with Pittsburgh artists including @ARTBYVENUS and others. We never got the collab painting back from the gallery. 
Mid 2017, i shifted directions in my work and kind of stopped painting. I still did some, but i moved heavily into working with the clay as a medium.
When i first started using clay as a medium i was making functional pottery. Teapots, jars, cups, mugs. They were normally thrown on the wheel and then finished in wood-fired kiln.
Moving away from oil painting, making pottery revitalized my interest in creating for my self and not for anyone else. But pottery wasn’t fulfilling enough for me, i absolutely loved it to death, but i found it to lacking something.
In 2018 i was a bit fed up with making pottery at the time, and i made this sculptural “teapot”. This is made with clay and painted with a colorful glaze material and fired in an electric kiln.
In the summer of 2018, i made this vase. This was one of the most symbolic pieces to me becuase it symbolizes my roots in painting, my roots in pottery, and it was the first time to really create “sculptural” relief. It was my past, present, and future all in one piece.
Clay became addictive to me once i found sculpture. Rather making a painting, i could physically sculpt an object from my brain and then finish it with ceramic colors.
In the winter of 2018 is when i was really hitting my stride in the studio. Making sculptures, finishing with color, and firing them day in and day out.
Sculptures make more sense to me when trying to express how i feel. To me, it feels better when i can physically create a 360° View of the work. Sculpting each side, angle, curve, shape, and each object from a blob of wet malleable clay is unexplainable.
I’ve been able to now tell physical stories with the things that i make from a plain block of clay. It has allowed my voice as an artist to develop from a portrait painter to a more original teller of stories. Fuller thoughts, more true to who i am.
For this piece, i made 60 rectangular tiles with mini sculptures on them, hung them together on the wall and painted a “mural” like image over them with glaze material for color.
This piece (unfinished) is a sculpted full-size 55 gallon drum as a “pedestal”, with for the sculpture with the child and the bomb. It is made to speak on war , particularly the Vietnam war. Lockdown has revoked my access to kilns. So it remains unfinished.
This is more unfinished sculptural work made out of clay I’ve made during the stay at home orders. They also remain unfinished until facilities can re-open to fire kilns.
I’ve recently made a few oil painted dog commissions and although i hate commissions (love the $$), it really helped me see that i should get back into painting. I remembered how much i loved putting paint on canvas.
If you’ve actually made it this far. Thank you. That’s about where I’m at for the time being. I’m literally living in my studio, never leaving. I’m sculpting every day, and lately I’ve also been painting every day. I’m grateful and excited for my journey. 
