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| September 2015 |
It’s impossible for me to do anything other than create art, ponder about art, or envision it. I think in colors, lines, shapes, contrasts, and textures and the best way I know how to explain anything I’m trying to communicate is by creating an image of it.
In addition to being a visual artist, I previously served as the department head and a faculty member of studio and digital art education at K-12 parochial school. I have a Masters in Education for secondary art education and learning that was completed in the Fall of 2013 from Liberty University.
I am specifically interested in bottom up/student-centered curriculum and instruction, collaborative learning, and interdisciplinary scaffolding for other subject areas. As of Summer of 2014, I have been teaching for eight years total with six of those years being at my current private high school for visual art education and two of those years being at a public middle school for 6th grade Reading/Language Arts and Social Studies.
I left the classroom for visual arts by teaching at the high school level in March of 2016. I continue to dedicate myself and my time to my professional career as a visual artist and designer.
My specific areas of expertise for this relationship focuses mostly on painting (oil, acrylic, tempera, and oil pastels) but I also have expertise in the area of photography and graphic/web design (that's a given) and experience with collage (digital and traditional), assemblage, sculpting with non-traditional and traditional materials, and the design and fabrication of interior and exterior installation art.
Some of the story of how I became an art teacher of studio and visual arts can be found HERE.
A bit more about the more personal (and indirectly art-related) details of who I am and what comprises my life can be found HERE.
What did it take to have a professional photography career? Parting words at the close of my professional photography career of 12 years for those who might be interested in delving into the world of professional photography can be found HERE.
I am an avid fan and user of Instagram and if you are interested in seeing some of my "snaps" you can view them HERE. Most of what I take pictures of are student artwork (so you will see some cross-posted stuff as well as pictures of adventures with my family.
In the Fall of 2012, I developed my own teaching methodology for curriculum and instruction for inquiry-based learning in the visual art and design classroom. I have found it works best in a studio art classroom (vs. digital studio) but I believe it can be "flexed" to be applicable to any content-area. A detailed write-up about it can be found HERE.
Here are some artists I admire (click the names for information about them and/or a sampling of their work):
- Norman Rockwell
- Tamara de Lempicka
- Chuck Close
- Jeff Koons
- Johannes Vermeer
- Peter Max
- Vincent van Gogh
- Marc Chagall
- Henri Matisse
- Arnold Newman
- Rosie Hardy
- Punam Bean
- Mike Lewis (visual and performance art)
- Tomaso Albinoni (he is a baroque music composer but an artist no less)
- Mark O'Connor (instrumental artist)
- Michelle Branch (contemporary singer-songwriter)
- Dangermuffin (vocal/performing artists - it is a musical group)
- Kate Hudson (performance artist/actress)
- Carolina Herrera (fashion designer)
- Tom Ford (fashion designer & film maker)
- Liu Bolin (performance art and photography)
