I began my formal art training at RC Gorman Museum in Davis and for as long as I can remember I have been a formal student of painting/art making…including many years of taking classes at San Francisco Art Institute.  I usually paint in oils or acrylics, although I also enjoy making digital paintings.  I have also worked extensively sculpting in metal and clay as well as print-making.  For me the making of art is like jumping into a canvas and either passionately staying focused on the painting process, or going with the flow until I come out the other end and find the painting complete.  Usually, I get from blank canvas to completed product by constantly reviewing my work progress.  I constantly keep in mind the colors I am choosing to use (or in the mood to use that day), the forms and marks I put on the canvas, the brush strokes big and small, and heavy and delicate, and the tension of the paint in my brush.  Color, value gradations and light are up there in importance when I evaluate where I am with a painting my.  I almost always have an emotional connection to the art pieces I making.  And now and then, that emotional connection carries in it the music I’m listening to when painting…..  so much so that one can almost see the musical notes and musician’s rhythm in my brush strokes….Such is certainly evident with my painting Bill’s Purple Iris….  the brush strokes in that flower are purely the good vibe of Keith Jarrett’s piano touch when playing “You don’t know what love is/Muezzin”.   And in another painting Olive Me Greek you can see the dancing music of Van Morrison’s “Here Comes the Night”. I am also influenced by where I go when meditating, and where I sometimes find a completed painting hanging in air just waiting for me to reach out, grab it, and make it my own……  and then I put that vision on canvas.