ARTIST STATEMENT

My intrigue with trees dates back to my childhood in a small town in Louisiana that was lush with big trees, especially broad live oaks and tall pecan trees. I attended school here in the Dallas metro in the early 1980’s, where I became very fond of the wide open spaces here in north Texas. I often say that my paintings are a marriage of my early life and my later years spent here in North Texas, pairing the large trees of my childhood with the wide open prairies and big blue sky found here in North Texas.

It’s easy to see that I am very influenced by impressionist and Neo-impressionist artists, but I try very hard to create my own unique style. I use paint brushes with thin, long hairs that I trim to the point where sometimes only about a dozen hairs remain on the brush. Once the paint is mixed to a consistency where the thickness of the paint is slightly thicker than motor oil but not quite as thick as pudding, I then accumulate a small amount of paint on the tip of the brush in order to apply it to the canvas and get the pointillist and textured effect.  

I have two styles, my original and more traditional style, which most people refer to as pointillism, where the trees and fields are created with many small textured dots or sometimes thin lines to represent grass. I have a second style that I refer to as “DeGraphi”. DeGraphi is an acronym I coined from the words “detail” and “graphic” that I started about a year after my career as an artist began in 2000. These paintings involve a great deal of detail, like swirls, graphics, lines, and or curls that cover the entire canvas. Demand for this style of painting has increased so much that they account for close to half of all of my painting sales today.

My paintings are detailed and colorful. I would like my paintings to draw the viewer and put a smile on their face. I try to paint “happy paintings” that create a fantasy landscape that the viewer would like to visit. Enjoy!