Footlights
2019, Oil on panel, 24 x 24 in.
The son of a quiet preacher turned engineer and a church organist, I was raised in Baton Rouge, a college town and heavy industrial center on the banks of the Mississippi. I was the dreamy kid who got lost on the way home from kindergarten. I came late to art making, painting specifically, while living in Houston, newly married and 26. I hadn't been exposed to art while growing up but found myself spending a lot of time in the city's museums and galleries. It was the early eighties and there was an inspired resurgence happening in painting. I dove in with obsessive enthusiasm, taking courses at the Glassell School, and beginning the long process of learning by doing.Still at it (now a grandfather) art making, working, discovering, questioning. In recent years, I've made a couple of animations that combine original music and charcoal drawings into a personal form of storytelling. I hold down a trade school job as a drafter, and I remain a sometimes hopeless stammering introvert, but one who is always on the lookout for new ways to communicate. My ambition is to tell it away and warm the blood.