I once heard that great art is not as much about what you see when you look at it, but rather what you feel when you experience it. Inspired by this, I strive to create art that invokes a strong sense of joy and connection with nature. I am primarily a self-taught artist and enjoy working in a variety of media. In my drawings, I enjoy using inks and colored pencils on paper that I texture and varnish to add interest and depth. Most of my inspiration comes from what I see around me every day. I take lots of photographs for reference and juxtapose them with other impromptu photos or with posed photos to create images that entice the viewers to recall stories from their past to create their own new ones. Recently, I was encouraged by another artist to bring my work to the three a dimensional surface of a gourd. Using a combination of pyrography, inks and carving, I can bring my work to this very natural surface and create functional works of art.