Beginning as a metal sculptor, in the year 2012, I began this art journey that would lead me down many different paths, explore many different mediums, and connect me with countless incredible people and opportunities. I had always been a very creative and restless person by nature, always exploring new mediums of expression such as ceramics, music, and metalwork. But it was in the year 2018, when I began exploring my now favorite medium, oil painting. This is now what I am most known for, and the medium that feels the most intuitive. I have been featured in many different local art galleries, been a part of a few showings, and have done countless commissions for people in the area. I am now studying fine arts at Monroe Community College, and am moving onward to a graduate program to pursue my masters degree in fine arts. My biggest influences include my local contemporaries, which quickly become good friends, surrealist artists such as Zdzislaw Beksinski, Dali, and Giger, the great masters Caravaggio, Leonardo DaVinci, Michelangelo, Bernini, and fantasy artists such as Boris Vallejo, Julie Bell, and Michael Whelan. I have had many mentors along my journeys, but the one man who gave me the most and to whom I am eternally grateful, is P.D. Avallone, a local artist, teacher, and master. He died in June of 2019. In the final days of his life, he gave me the honor of all of his art supplies along with piles of art books, and tons of paper and canvas (which now months and months later, I still have not come close to exhausting the supply). This, along with all the inspiration from not just his work, but all the work of those who I mentioned earlier, solidified this path to mastery in my life. This was the big turning point in my life when I started to get serious and motivated to make this my life, my legacy.
self portrait in charcoal