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| "There is nothing in all the world more beautiful or significant of the laws of the universe than the nude human body."
Robert Henri
I can't remember a time when art wasn't a part of my life. It has always been there, driving me to create something, anything. My earliest childhood memories are full of coloring and painting on any surface that I could find. I drew on everything, on paper, the furniture, and the walls. Nothing was safe from my early creative explorations. As I grew older the passion stayed with me. It is an obsession. I studied art formally for five years and explored many media, but I always come back to the monochromatic techniques. It is, for me, the best way to express pure form, without the distraction of color. Although I still work in many media, scrimshaw is my primary medium. I discovered it in 1987 while working in a knife shop. I bought some scrap ivory from Bob Engnath in 1988, and won my first competition at the Knife Expo in 1989. Since then I have continually sought to not only improve my work, but to push the boundaries of the medium to new levels.
The majority of my work is dedicated to the glorification of the human figure. In any artistic rendering of the figure there must be an undercurrent of passion and sensuality. Without this, a work is merely an academic exercise and has no soul. I seek to express this passion in my work. The play of light and shadow across flesh, a pair of smoldering eyes, the triumphant stance of an angel, or the pensive mood of a woman lost in her own dark thoughts. These are the subjects of my work. My figures are never passive. They are never victims. They are strong spiritual beings. In control of their own destinies, they are heroic, noble and gloriously human, experiencing life in all of it's complexity. My work rejects the degraded view of humanity that has been forced upon the world. People are not inherently evil. The human body is not sinful or obscene. I try to express the grandeur of the human spirit through the body that contains it. For this reason, my work has been well received by everyone who has seen it. I believe that it speaks to something within all of us.
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