What Do Artists Think?
	1 Are energy and color in your art influenced by your cultural background? I consider myself more southern than Cajun, but Cajuns like spice and intensity, rather than moderation, in all things. I am bold and expressive. 2 How have you been marketing/selling your work? Family and friends can be critical so I am honored when they are willing to purchase and display my artwork. 3 Is showing stuff that isn’t physically viewable intuitive to the way that you work or is it a conscious decision for you to show the unseen? This is too abstract for me. I avoid subtleties. 4How do you break through the numbness and complacency? What numbness and complacency? I am surrounded by inspiration and have never been at a loss for what to paint. 5 Do you feel that artists need to build a relationship with their subjects or do they need to remain detached? When painting a portrait I get a sense of the life of the subject. Their joys, sorrows, sacrifices, children, dreams, ambitions, even if I do not know them. I try to put that in my painting and hope that the viewer gets a sense of the subject as well. This is my perception and I can be totally incorrect, but this is how I breathe life into my creations. 6 How do you feel about artists that create images solely for shock value? I am shocked and do not approve of this means of getting noticed. I avoid but don’t censor. After all, ancient artists used to paint with blood, feces, and urine, so with art anything goes. I leave the judgment up to community standards, but do know of disturbing images that are out there. 7 When did you realize that you wanted to be an artist? When I went beyond imitation and started creating, rather late in my life. 8 If you could be a sculptor what would you sculpt? Statues from life and not abstract geometric forms. 9 Can you teach somebody to be an artist or is it an innate ability? If I believed "talent" was innate I would not teach art. 10 How do you define art? Music that is not pleasant to the ear is noise. Images that are pleasing to the eye are decoration. To me art is making a symbolic representation of a visual image or thought, 11 What is it about your own art or the act of making art that you don’t like? That I can’t always replicate what I have already done successfully, like bowling a strike. 12 What do you feel is the most important element of your pictures? Is it your subjects, is it the process or is it your vision and concepts? My use of pure color in establishing a readable tonal value (as in a black and white photograph). 13 Is there such a thing as "the perfect image"? That is why the camera was invented. 14 If, for whatever reason, you could only make one more image in your life and it was the last image that you would ever make; what would it be? The tree that I want planted at the head of my grave. 15 How do you feel about people’s reaction to your work? Humbled. 16 What do you try to communicate to those that view your images? A sense of beauty and appreciation of nature. 17 Is it important to you for people to like your work? I know that no one paints just like me and that there is a demand for my work. 18 If you could study under any artist who has ever lived, who would it be? The prehistoric cave wall artists. I’m not convinced that we are any better than they were. They told a story using mud and ashes, painted surprisingly realistically, and relied on memory. Their conveyance of their world has remained intact for at least three thousand years. 19 Where have you most often found inspiration for your works? The infinite structures and negative spaces formed by plants and architechs. 12 How do you decide on your color pallet? I am not as concerned about warms and cools of the same color as I am with using the three primaries and secondaries. Creative color is more important to me than local color. I believe in a limited pallet of usually seven or eight pigments. I am moving away from pure colors and am becoming more confident in mixing colors.