One of my favorite art books is called Thrift Store Paintings. It is a funny, sad and slightly creepy collection of paintings found in thrift stores by Jim Shaw. When I started to make drawings and paintings, that book was my inspiration. My goal was to make “funny” pictures that would make people react the same way I reacted to the pictures in that book. I quickly realized it was an impossible goal and moved on to other things, but still a sliver of that thrift store inspiration remains.

For me the best idea is rarely the first idea—it’s much more likely to be the thirteenth idea.  The struggle of working out ideas of composition, color and line, one on top of one another, all while trying to retain a high level of clarity, plainly shows in the finished drawings and paintings.  In some ways that struggle becomes the drawing style.  What is that style?  Cartoon-Expressionism?  Naïve-Academic?  Picturesque-Messiness?  Maybe all of the above.