Good Morning,

Welcome to my brain. I type fast with a lot to say…and I hope you’ll stay…until the end.

It’s a little before 8am on Wednesday and I’d like you to know that it has taken me FOREVER to get here for my first blog post. Yep, that’s right…forever. I’m nervous and excited all at once, but mostly I’m obsessed. It was a little over a year ago when I began the journey of creating my website with the amazing Kevin Gallagher. We were all stuck home during the pandemic and trying to stay productive and sane. I was in the middle of painting my face off to pay my rent, since my wedding band had lost all gigs, and I was also observing (virtually) some college courses I was hired to teach in 2021. This was all before my torn rotator cuff. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I’m now teaching those college courses, continuing to paint my face off for clients and now businesses who would like to sell  my work, helping to vocal produce multiple recording artists in the studio, forming my own band, teaching close to 15 private piano/vocal students each week, practicing guitar, creating guitar tabs for my own music, drawing up business cards for clients, and handling everything that falls under “legal & contractual” for the upcoming release of my debut album “ARTIST” in the first quarter of 2022. On my “Free Time” I try to exercise around five days each week, connecting with my family and friends on the phone (occasionally in person) and I love to get lost in petting my two cats. All the while I’m still walking around obsessed.

What am I obsessed with? EVERYTHING AROUND ME. I guess we can call obsession and inspiration the same thing…I’ll try to explain.

I have confidence issues like the rest of my fellow Artists. However, my confidence doesn’t dwell in the CAN and CANNOT department. I am not walking around wondering if I am ABLE to paint all the things that I want to paint. I am not worried if I am ABLE to sing and produce the music inside my heart and head. My confidence is challenged in whether or not I can DECIDE on a direction to tackle…because like I said…I am completely underwater with my obsession at this point.  I’m overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of things around me. How colors and plants and skies can change from week to hour to minute. I take pictures constantly of things I’d like to paint. One album on my phone has over 500 pictures of images I would love to paint someday. I once took over a 100 pictures in one week of the mushrooms growing in my plant because every time I walked by the mushroom had changed and I knew everything I saw was changing literally right before my eyes.  You might think I’m acting like a child, but I know I’m acting like an Artist.  And because I’m a teacher, I have so many thoughts racing in my head at once about the beauty I witness. A predominant thought is always “How can I translate my love for this object into my work in order to teach the viewer about the genuine fleeting beauty of it?”

It’s like a prevailing and tented blanket of inspirational ADD. I have thought so much about “How can I possibly communicate what I’m feeling” that I believe I have begun to narrow down my intentions over the past couple of years. I believe I can express my genuine love and appreciation for things by combining multiple intentions together. Hence, the album. I have decided to release an album next year that combines both my music and art “callings”.  As a songwriter, honesty is paramount. In our current environment it is very hard to grab onto an Artist and believe them. So I figured, if I spent at least 50 hours on each canvas I paired with my songs (10 songs and 10 canvases) – that maybe the person listening/viewing might feel as if I told some form of truth when it is all said and done. Along the journey of solidifying my direction, it has now permeated into my daily living experience.

For instance…

I drive a lot. Over an hour each way to my job locations throughout the week. So approximately 10-15 hours of driving each week. I’m always intaking while driving. I study the things around me and I’ve begun to notice patterns EVERYWHERE. There are these wonderful and amazing things called fractals that I learned about 5-7 years ago. And everywhere I look, I see them. And I get inspired..then I become obsessed with finding them again.  The actual definition of a fractal reads as:

A curve or geometric figure, each part of which has the same statistical character as the whole. Fractals are useful in modeling structures (such as eroded coastlines or snowflakes) in which similar patterns recur at progressively smaller scales, and in describing partly random or chaotic phenomena such as crystal growth, fluid turbulence, and galaxy formation.
It’s very easy to see the presence of fractals in a rose since the pattern continues forever until we disappear down the dark and dreamy center of the flower. But since I have realized that what I’m feeling lies within the comparison and ultimately “joining” of multiple things, I had this thought a few years ago. I thought….“If water can erode a coastline in a mathematical pattern, and air is just another form/dimension/state of water…then does the air shape tree lines much like the water shapes a coastline?” 

And then I saw it.

Can you see it?
Isn’t it beautiful ??
I am in awe of nature and how it presents itself. If I may narrow my focus even further, I am complete awe of how water presents itself in similar fashions while jumping across liquid and gas (air) boundaries. Let’s zoom in even further and say that I am completely OBSESSED with how these patterns can present themselves in different size formats. The tree image in the middle might be a space anywhere from 300-500 ft. wide, while the sea foam picture might be about 5 ft. wide. Judging by the size of the people in the coastline picture on the right, that space looks to be at least 1/4 of a mile wide.

Another example:

We’ve all heard the term “Everything is frequency.” Well, here’s your proof. One occurs in the span of a second (the soundwave) and the tree pattern occurs over a lifetime.  I am in love with what this teaches us about life, and how we are all so much more similar than different. I love how this even bends the concept of time. This is what I bring to my work. Knowing that I can call a tree line a sound wave in my head while I paint enables me to disengage from form while creating my work. I feel it enables me to be very HONEST while creating.
This is why I’m OBSESSED and can often become overwhelmed with everything around me while trying to create work for sale. This is why I say it has taken me FOREVER to get to a place where I feel I have enough time to sit down and even create a blog.
So welcome to my brain, I do hope you’ll come back to think with me again