Art found me early on in life. The first time that I remember would be when I was six years old living in Queens New York while attending PS 156 in Laurelton during art class. My painting of a lion was chosen among other schools in the borough to be exhibited at the Lever House in Manhattan, This became my first exhibition. Ever since it just followed me around until I decided to peruse it professionally after my military career ended in 1997. I wanted to serve humanity in a different way and thought the arts was a great way to do so, but it was also a different form of commutation a different vocabulary to express feelings and emotions. That concept was interesting to me and the power that visual media had in history and today when it comes to influencing and bridging cultures and minds.

I was born in New York City but was also later raised in Europe which in itself gave me a wide pool of information to draw from. I came to making art professionally out of necessity. Necessity and fear not to wind up having to do a nine to five job I would not want to do for the rest of my life. After eight years in the Military, changing to become an artist was a complete paradox. But it was that necessity that drove me to pull it through even through very challenging times financially. I also raised a family with two children as an artist which in itself is challenging but always saw my family as a motivator to do so. I’m a painter primarily and typically use different techniques, materials and generally speaking try to go against styles and formats that have existed before me. If I complete a work that I haven’t seen before that is usually a good indication that I’m on the right path. My work is now in Museums and institutions internationally. I would refer to my work as Avant-Garde in nature if I gave it any labels at all, in a sense that they are experimental works and seek to push traditions and traditional thinking further. They are typically provoking and have a socio-political undertone in most of my practices.

There are many. When choosing this profession, one needs to know that you can and must be willing to be shot down from your position and your art at any given time. Your art carries a position, politically or socially or just creatively, not all will always agree or be attracted to it. But we are there to challenge perspectives, not appease. To be an artist you have to need make art, not just want it. One example of my personal resilience may be after my wife passed of cancer after a two year struggle almost losing everything at an early age of thirty-five and still having raise two children. Another was after I survived the Gulf War and through therapy found painting again. I was able to turn my new realties into something creative and productive which ultimately saved my life and lead me on a path to success. You have to be able to Invision tings before hand and know that you will make them happen. A certain discipline and determination is required in any case.

If i look at my body of work over the last thirty year, One could argue that if there is a mission, it would be to revisit history in a visual sense and reevaluate what we have been looking at, Images that have been held as superior truths through the Lense and for a limited group that did not speak for all people, In particular people of color. This remains a problem in today’s world where the foundation of western colonialism still has problems including voice of by a multi cultural society where women and people of color now have voices, My paintings often mock and challenge old iconic figures painterly and historically that disrupt the foundation of what we have been seeing and project more of an era of conflict.