About The Artist
My mission is to reflect the love and glory of God into the world by creating objects, stories, poetry, songs, experiences and places that use imagination, beauty and wonder to invite the soul into communion with God, with others, and with all Creation.
I draw my inspiration especially from the animal world, the organisms and environments of deep time, the mysteries of science and the desire to experience primitive and historical life. I have a particular desire to create things that bring to life what we can’t usually see, whether because it is long extinct, or imaginary, or beyond description. I hope that everyone who comes in contact with my work gets a little taste of wonder, and is encouraged to open to the Lover knocking at the door.
I am still learning a lot about different media and have a lot I still want to experiment with and do, but at the moment most of my work is either some variant of pencil on paper or digital painting. I really want to expand more into sculpture and jewelry-making though—I love little heartfelt trinkets with science-y themes, and I’ve always loved dioramas and museum exhibits and want to learn to make them myself. I’m also looking forward to picking up oils again and want to make some more “serious” paleoart the old-school way.
As a kid I grew up drawing with ballpoint pens, and I liked printer paper best because it didn’t have lines on it. I was a bit of a snob about drawing in pen because you couldn’t just erase it, but as an adult I’ve really grown to appreciate having a little more flexibility, and I’ve also recently discovered the wonders of toned paper and white pencils. Hopefully I’ve also grown to appreciate the criticisms of other human beings a bit more too!
I’ve always drawn animals above all else, real and imaginary. I’ve always loved dinosaurs, though I’ve been learning about other time periods and finding them delightful as well. Occasionally though, I’ll dabble in drawing cars or imaginary machines or spaceships. I do want to design my own car someday, but whether I have the patience to actually do it remains to be seen. I’m trying to learn to draw some previously-neglected subjects better, such as human faces and landscapes, and am discovering that I both appreciate them more than I thought I would, and that they are still not where my heart is—usually.
I have also written stories for years, and poetry more recently. My reading diet generally consists of the Bible, Charles Dickens, Tolkien, Lewis and L’Engle—and Chesterton of course! Occasionally I’ll delve into Old English poetry; I’ve read The Faerie Queene end-to-end (though I can’t say I remember much of it), and I’ve tried to read Dostoevsky (in translation) but had trouble getting into it. I’ll probably try again. Besides literary stuff I do read science books frequently, or try to at least; but I don’t write science, though I love to learn it. My favorite at the moment is The Complete Dinosaur, and though one might quibble at the accuracy of the title, it really has the best claim to it of any book I’ve seen. I could also make some joke about it serving just as well as a New York City white pages as a menacing projectile, but it’s really too heavy to throw very far.
I write broadly in the sci-fi/fantasy genre, but not high fantasy or even high sci-fi fantasy; I like whatever is heartfelt, if I have it in me to make it, and though I do like a bit of technical detail, I find it is very easy to overdo. I think I’m much more picky than Tolkien about trying to maintain internal canonical consistency—I can’t seem to help it—but I am very much of his school of thinking when it comes to the intersection of faith and fantasy. I don’t despise allegory, but in my hands at least it tends to be an unworkably clumsy tool, so I prefer creative emergence—letting the flow do its thing. Generally, when I can’t find my flow, it’s because I’m trying to force myself to say something that isn’t actually true.
