I believe the most fundamental skill a visual artist must develop is the ability "to see". This is the Physical development, using our senses, light/color, space and form. It is about the edges, shapes, positive and negative space, perspective, scale, etc. Without learning to see, there is no understanding of the relationships between all the visual elements, and drawing from life is an essential discipline to learn how to see. Drawing from life creates a link between hand and eye, and between the outer world and our perception of it. I use drawing to explore ideas, people, places and things.

When I began learning to see, I practiced Contour drawing, where my eyes roam over a subject while I draw without looking at the paper. With practice my hand and eyes sync-together, giving me confidence and creating a line with feeling. Contour drawings help an artist reinforce a strong reliable connection between the hand and the eye. I like to draw in ink because I can’t erase, so I depend on contour drawing to help me be there to see and feel, trusting my hand and eyes rather than my head, to produce a what I call, a Living Line, one that captures the character of the moment.

Everybody can look, but not everyone can see what is there. It usually takes someone who can see, to reveal the things the person is missing. Learning to see expands the information one receives and understands.

Besides drawing and learning to see, I have two other areas of attention that have become part of my artistic practices. The first is that I start a drawing with no preconception or agenda in order to discover new ideas and images that spring from a blank page. Many times it begins with a wandering line. This form of discovery is difficult and needs continual practice too. It is easy and safe to replicate what we already know and do, or copy what is trending in the media, but to accept the unknown is to risk being a failure. But by taking this risk, you have already succeeded. We do not expect scientists to know their discoveries before their experiments, yet facing the inevitable failures provide the scientist with important information about what did not work and why it failed. Failure brings us closer to true discovery. I understand this part as the Emotional risk.

And my third area of attention and practice with my drawings as well as with other media, is the Intellectual process. The skills used by the intellect are logic, linear thinking, definitions, procedures, analysis, themes and series. Combining the emotional risk with the Intellectual process allows me to revisit themes and ideas already of interest and expressed, in order to discover new connections and ideas.

Then the challenge is to manifest these new ideas and themes into real works of art in the material world. Everyone has ideas, beliefs and experiences, but not everyone knows how to express them as real works of art. This is one difference between a “a dreamer” and the skill required of an “authentic artist”.

My best works are the product of these different attentions and disciplines: “seeing”, the physical development; taking the emotional risk to discover; and by using the intellectual process, to know what to say, and how to manifests these ideas into real works of art. When viewed together, the marriage of these different practices create a clearer understanding, and a more complete vision of my artwork and my creative process.