Falling Moments a New Painting from Divine West

Hi friends, I wanted to share a brand new painting with you all titled “Falling Moments”. This lovely piece was a part of my show at Divine West Gallery and is currently still available from the gallery. I actually started this piece as a bit of a study to test and review some art supplies from Phoenix Art Store but as I continued to work on it I started to see its potential as a standalone piece. This challenging painting as a great exercise in studying and replicating intense lighting and I’m really proud of how it turned out.

“Falling Moments”

As we all walk through the setting sun of life, tiny beautiful moments fall right before our eyes. Swaying on currents of air and glistening in perfect beams of sunlight and as they fall no matter how much we try they cannot be slowed and they cannot be stopped from hitting ground. All we can do is observe and appreciate their ephemeral bliss as they delicately enter our path.

view in shop

A Painting about Trauma

Hi friends, I hope you all have been well. I just wanted to share a little update on a painting that ive been working on for the last few months. Once I had finished my chemo treatments in late September of last year I had the strong urge to create a painting in response to my entire cancer experience. I wanted it to be a self-portrait that expressed the expanse of emotions that i felt during the entire process, hopelessness, fear, paint, loneliness, optimism, hope ect.

It honestly felt really good to sort of take back some agency over myself and the experience by painting about it. I took many many photo references in my closed with a light taped to my chest for an intense and dramatic light source. I wanted the light to be right where the cancer started which was the middle of my sternum.

There will be much more symbolism in this painting to explain once it is done. But for now I wanted to give you an update since I havent posted in a bit. Let me know what you think so far :)

My Interview with Bold Journey

Hi friends! So recently I was fortunate enough to do a written interview with Bold Journey as a part of their Hidden Gems series. They had some very thoughtful questions that allowed me to talk about how I continued to make my art while fighting cancer, what skills and qualities I value the most as an artist and much more. Click the button below to read the full interview!

Read Full Interview

Why You Havent Heard from Me

Hello! Now I’m not sure that many people read my blog and most of you probably already know this from social media. But I figured it cant hurt to document this on my website just in case. So I havent updated my website much or posted any new blogs in the last few months and theres a good reason for it, I promise! In April of this year I was unfortunately diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma which is a type of cancer that originates in the lymphatic system. Spooky right. It was especially frightening for this to happen to me at the ripe age of 31. But apparently this is the type of cancer that can happen to young people so I just happened to be a part of that unlucky statistic. But luckily for me this is a very weak and dumb cancer (my wife’s words) so even with this dark news we had a good reason to believe that I would beat it with treatment.

So beginning in late April I started a 6 month long journey of chemotherapy to slowly destroy these annoying cells who think they have the right to put my life in danger! And to make a very long story short, basically the treatment is working amazingly and as I am writing this blog post I only have 4 remaining treatments! So I am writing this from a much better place with so much more optimism in my heart than I had 4-5 months ago.

All this to say that this has been an incredibly challenging process in every way imaginable and I’m so happy to be at the tail end of it. And luckily I have been able to find a pretty good routine in between my chemo treatments so I actually have been able to paint for most of this summer! And it just so happened that before all of this I was working on a rather big and intensive Terra Human painting that I was able to continue creating when I felt able. Working on this painting sort of grounded me in a way, giving me something to work on and progress through while I was dealing with difficult emotions and scary changes in my body. Even when I was feeling terrible after a treatment I could look at the progress photos of my painting and feel proud of something that I was making.

It feels sort of poetic that as I am now in the final stages of my treatment I am also finally finishing this behemoth of a painting. Everyday I have been meticulously adjusting and adding little things because it will honestly be hard to finally call this painting complete after all we have been through together. I’m looking forward to sharing this painting soon and I really hope that the final product will be worth all of the time and effort.

Thanks for being patient with me as I navigate a particularly difficult period of life. And don’t worry! I will be back to a hundred percent soon!

My Newest Interview with Shoutout Colorado!

Hey all! I’m very excited to bring you a brand new interview that I did with Shoutout Colorado recently. Some of you might remember that they originally interviewed me back in 2020 so they wanted to do a bit of a follow up interview to see how things have been in the years since. They had some really interesting questions this time around and I very much enjoyed answering them! It’s actually crazy to compare the images of my work in this article to the original one in 2020, I feel like my art has grown so much since then.

View Article