Why I Paint

When did you start painting, and what made you start?

This is the question I typically hear when someone sees one of my paintings, or hears that I'm painting. My answer is simple. Usually I'll say something like I've always wanted to paint and it was time to start.

The longer story is that it has been inside me for a very long time, and many circumstances led to opening the creative door.

I remember hearing stories of my grandmother painting in her backyard shed, and I'm fortunate to have a few of her pieces. My mom has always been creative — growing up, it seemed she was always working on some new project.

There are a few moments where my love and appreciation for art was kindled. One of the first was my constant sketching as a middle schooler. Mostly it was guitars and band logos I loved. Nothing special came out of that work, but the drive did — one more drawing, one more sketch to get the curve of a Fender Stratocaster body just right.

The real moment came when my grandmother took me to Paris and London the summer I was in college. We spent hours at the Louvre and at my favorite at the time, the Musée d'Orsay. Those Impressionist paintings by Cézanne, Monet and Degas were tattooed in my mind. The colors. The techniques used to form shapes, buildings, people, landscapes out of brush strokes and medium and creative thought. It blew my mind.

But the moment that really hit home came on a trip to Washington, D.C. We took a quick museum trip, and Rothko's Untitled, 1949 grabbed me and never let go.

This piece seemed to stare back at me, at its nearly eight feet tall by five feet wide.

It may seem odd, but when I look at this painting — and others — it feels like I'm carrying on a conversation with the artist and the work in my head. It reminds me of deep prayer, where I'm concentrated on nothing but the moment. A relationship. A conversation.

I couldn't take my eyes off it. I was emotionally moved. I don't think I understood the complexity of that moment at the time, but I left the museum with a print of the painting, and it hung for years in my college room and after graduation.

It is that relationship with the creative process that has been stirring in me for some time. The many conversations with my friend and amazing artist Dan Schwartz. The discussions and lunch hours with a color wheel and oil paint with a local artist and friend, Rosemary Achelpohl. After consuming a number of books and articles on the New York School of abstract expressionism, and watching as many documentaries as I could find on Rothko, Pollock, de Kooning, Still, Kline, Hofmann, and anyone painting in New York in the 1950s, I decided it was time.

This is my painting journey.