I am presently working on a book that I hope to publish within the next two years. The book is called The Garden and is an allegorical tale that mirrors the life of an old man who, while dying in a hospital bed begins to recall the people and events that have in various ways influenced his life and led to who he has ultimately become. It’s a sort of Big Fish story. The Garden uses archetypical images and settings to describe the old man’s life as having taken place in a sort of hyper reality, in a house that rests in a place that parallels the memories the old man unravels in his recollections. The Garden is that place. The house in The Garden represents the human body that the old man inhabits and the Garden, the world outside. Inside the house is a child, who represents the seated observer or spirit who over a series of days meets a cst of characters who seek to preserve and destroy the house and the child inside. Most of my work is presently being done with this book in mind, including the children’s book I am working on illustrating now, Once Upon a Time in St. Augustine, which is to be published in the public school system according to the author, Liz Lang, whose husband teaches here at Flagler. This will be my second published book and I’m hoping the proceeds will help pay for The Garden to be published eventually. I’m using my time in school to refine my technique and actually work on the book itself. Last year I filmed a portion of it. The eight-minute segment will be shown at City Yoga on King Street during the Art Walk this month along with a number of contributing sketches and paintings including those done for this class. I have been using the short film’s single frames to convert some of the more powerful images to the canvas. The glazing technique has been quite helpful in this process. So much so that I have further been shooting film of people on a green screen, choosing the appropriate lighting and background to replace the green, finding the best frame in the film sequence, printing that frame and transferring the image through the glazing process to 10 x 12 canvas. I am working on getting seven of these completed in all. Each is a portrait of one of the characters that show up toward the end of the story and gain entrance into the house ultimately contributing to it’s and thus the old man’s physical ruin and eventual spiritual redemption. Almost all characters are played by females, but are in the story called Mr. this or Mr. that. (Mr. Mosquito, for example.) I am shooting for an androgynous quality in the characters that appear throughout the book and an exaggerated or hyperrealism in the final book’s look, which the glazing process lends itself nicely toward. Thanks. It is book illustration that I am leaning toward to pay the bills on down the road.  Books sell while you sleep. Painting coupled with what I’ve in the last year learned in computer land will be my focus as I move forward. Anything I can learn that will help my technique is greatly appreciated. I’ve been painting since I was about 18 and have been selling paintings privately to friends and through various shows I’ve had in Orlando since 2000. Upon moving briefly to Hong Kong and seeing what was going on in the art world there and what successful artists were making, I decided to take a couple of steps back and go through school. Most every artist I’ve come to admire has had an intensive schooling and sports some degree of some sort. If you can’t beat them… Included below are a number of artists and interviews that have struck me in one-way or another. Odd Nerdrum has always been a favorite. I appreciate the human form and the ability to accurately paint that form. Odd Nerdrum does this with a vision that is gripping and hauntingly familiar. He is my present barometer. If an artist can paint something and make it look alive, that artist can do anything so far as I can tell. I was originally intent on becoming a comic book artist when I was a kid. I was always fascinated by what a good illustrator can do for an old idea. Illustration is, I believe, the backbone of fine art. I don’t much care for a painter of squiggles who has not first learned to paint a cup and make it look like a cup. I’ve recently and reluctantly been made to take a course in Modern Art History. I’ve come to appreciate the conversation that has taken place over the last two centuries between what have been some of the great thinkers to emerge from the human landscape and while I still think Duchamp is a jerk, I can appreciate the point he was trying to make, though I believe he did some damage to the collective human conversation along the lines of what Nietze did. Assholes. I have also come to respect Picasso, which is saying a lot. As it turns out, the man could paint to begin with. I never knew that. All in all I see art as a vehicle for communication and I wish to be a great communicator. James Victore, a graphic designer who I’ve come to respect for his philosophy of the art said, “Graphic design is a big fucking club with spikes in it, and I wanna wield it.” I like that and don’t think it applies exclusively to graphic design. When I was a child, Where the Wild Things Are was my favorite book and the lesson in that book I’ve always kept close to my heart. I learned the principle of unconditional love and the act of redemption despite whatever one might do in life through that book. Why? Because the images Maurice Sendak birthed into being through that book captured my child’s eyes and made me want to look again and again.