original oils on canvas and paper
Consciousness | “20 × 30” | Oil on canvas | 2023
I think there is far more available to us in the ethers than we can comprehend, and that the core essence of our personal evolution is connected to tapping into that into that bounty, putting the pieces together, and expressing it into practical reality. “Counsciousness” is the depiction of that process, with the top third of the painting as the bounty, the middle third our physical form, and the bottom third representing how our being expresses itself in a predictable, linear manner. But if you look close: all the faces are flawed. Whatever this game is, we certainly haven’t mastered it, and sometimes the bounty mutates into distortion.
Signs of Life (Light) Series
special thanks to the Nevada Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts for their grant support
Love | 30” x 20” | Oil on canvas | 2024
“Love” is an ode to all the people I’ve ever loved, to the friends, partners, lovers, missed connections, and what-ifs. Butterflies could never quite capture how love—all sorts of love—feels to me. But a thousand butterflies being sucked into a black hole? That I understand.
Each butterfly belongs to someone who has or had a strong pull on my heart. Many are mutants, warped or maimed or incomplete, either through my lens or due to the force pulling them into the vortex. There are bits of wings scattered about, a few that are sharp and ugly, and one that seems a little more beautiful than the rest.
Wally | 20” x 30” | Oil on canvas | 2024
“Wally” came through me while walking alongside dear friend in a mental health crisis, who for so many long months, tiptoed on the edge of awakening without ever quite breaking through. Awakenings are never easy. They come in direct proportion to suffering. The more the suffering, the greater the awakening. But a part of us leads us there, nudging us toward the light, even when we can’t see anything but brokenness. That calling comes from the little kid in us that is just so damn excited to be alive. The kid that played in the mud and found joy in parakeets and ran as fast as they could just because they could. That kid is in there. You’re in there. A million little pieces becoming whole again.
Ashes | 30” x 20” | Oil on canvas | 2025
While giving a talk on antidepressant withdrawal in Ashland, Ohio back in March of ‘25, I was struck by the lattice bark pattern in the city’s ash trees.
That took me to the construct of the Wood Wide Web, the underground network of microbes that connects trees to one another.
I thought about how we as humans are all connected too, constantly influencing each other, even though it seems like we’re individual entities.
The older I get and the more I step out of my own melodrama and into the collective story, the more I see the interconnectedness and complex brilliant behind it all.
This piece serves as a wild reminder of our entangled roots.
Shatter | 20” x 30” | Oil on canvas | 2025
“Shatter” is my interpretation of the moment everything changes, when the world you once knew breaks apart and something new barrels through—often without your permission. There is a period where you hold both light and dark, when everything is fractured and nothing makes sense. But it is so beautiful that you cannot turn away, no matter how much the edges hurt, no matter how much you want to go back. It is the tipping point, the line that forever marks Before and After.
Return | 30” x 20” | Oil on canvas | 2024
“Return” is the fourth painting in a series of nine 30”x20” oil paintings depicting the phases of my recovery from depression and psychiatric drug withdrawal. It is the most literal of my paintings – a visual representation of the moment I felt peace for the first time after a decade and a half, in the presence of a magnificent whale shark. This creature showed me way out, the ocean my God, the rhythmic pump of my breath under the sea revealing dormant signs of life.
S.O.M.A. | 18” x 12” | Oil on paper | 2026
In Greek, the word "soma" evolved to mean "the body living in its wholeness." This painting is my depiction of the moment my body and mind became whole, after a long period of depression and physical destabilization. On a beach in Koh Phangan, Thailand, I understood and felt true beauty for the first time as an adult. In that moment, I realized that if I could experience such profound beauty and awe once, I could do it again, thus paving the road to healing.
The Sitting Man | 20” x 30” | Oil on canvas | 2025
“The Sitting Man,” was one of my more challenging pieces to complete, due to the dozens of shades of greys made from custom blacks. To me, it represents the end of a long journey, when you are exhausted and stripped of everything. There is a moment of rest in this transition, where the next steps aren’t clear and the path hasn’t emerged. Sometimes we sit here for days. Or years. But, at some point the light appears and says, “This is the way.” And so the man is turned toward it, gathering the strength to stand up and move into it. It is the Beginning, really (which was almost this painting’s title.)
Freedom | 30” x 20” | Oil on canvas | 2024
“Freedom,” is my interpretation of existence. It’s like we’ve each been dropped into our own wild ocean and given a surfboard we don’t quite know how to ride, all of us looking around for someone else to answer the question, “Does it feel like this for you too?” In my mind’s eye I saw a man running on the waves, teetering the line between unbound freedom and that same freedom threatening to engulf him. Who or what is in control? The ocean? The man? The wave? What even is control in the face of fear? Towards the end of the painting I pivoted from a man running on the waves to one who is almost dancing. He has absorbed the light and color from the waves, his feet hovering above the board. He’s on the edge, in the unknown. Is he about to drop back down on the board in control? Or is he a breath away from being consumed? And is there any choice but to face the thing that’s scares him most and do it anyway?
Signs of Life | 12” x 9” | Oil on Paper | 2024
“Signs of Life” is an oil on paper that came about after a major leg surgery that forced me to sit for a while. I needed to paint but larger canvases and hours of standing wasn’t going to happen, so I stripped it all back and went smaller and more illustrative.
This image came to me during antidepressant withdrawal, and the scene is depicted in my award winning book, MAY CAUSE SIDE EFFECTS. Though I am not a religious person, I could not help but notice the symbolism of the bird on the cross.
At the time, psychiatry and suffering were my religion. I worshiped them and believed in their power, never questioning the validity of where it came from. Withdrawal forced me to push at my own beliefs to see if they held. They crumbled instantly and demanded a reckoning.
Something of all of that is in this piece.
To me, these black and whites are companion pieces to my other work. An exploration of polarity, dark to light, and ever evolving transformation.
Signs of Life (Dark) Series
Cosmic Playmates | 9” x 12” | oil on paper | 2025
“Cosmic Playmates” depicts a past life—I believe to be my most recent—of a girl searching for her little brother in the rubble of 1945 Dresden.
This was an image that came to me in antidepressant withdrawal, but did not fully form until nearly ten years later when I reunited with that little brother, who now lives in the body of a beautiful 38 year old man.
In a moment I will never forget, I gathered the courage to tell him why I thought we were connected (this isn’t the sort of thing you bring up to just anyone.)
Because this man is a spiritual antennae unlike any I’ve ever seen, he was able to remember the experience with me, filling in details I didn’t have.
The two little kids were orphans. It was so loud. He was trapped and the fire came.
In my “reliving” of this memory, the little girl did not carry flowers.
But today, the man is an arborist and has a unique relationship with nature. I added the flowering branches as an homage to him, and a reminder that life always returns.
You Are The Entertainment | 9” x 12” | Oil on paper | 2026
This piece is the 4th in my Signs of Life (Dark) series, which depicts the (literal) past lives I can somehow remember.
The life, as I recall, was one with a traveling circus. The little girl was part of the show, forced to dance while locked in a cage as part of the entertainment. She didn’t understand. She was always hungry. A kind man once slipped an apple through the bars.
Sometimes I get the end of a life, the death, rather. Not with this one. What I remember is being trapped and powerless.
Each of my Dark paintings pairs with a painting in the Light series. I’m painting the companion now. The figure is sitting in a bubble, in a bath of light, color, and prisms. It is total, complete bliss.
You Again | 9” x 12” | oil on paper | 2025
For most of my life, I have remembered the darkness.
As a kid, I had dreams of other lives. As an adult, I learned how to regress back to those lives and feel their experience in order to heal ailments in this life.
Or perhaps, in another framework, strong images with full backstories appear in my mind to inform my current experience.
Whether or not I’m remembering past lives or creating a personal metaphor is irrelevant. These images, while dark, have led to profound healing.
This piece, “You Again” is not easy to experience. It is based on a vision I had of a mother back in 800BC, who continued to care for her deceased child as if it was still alive.
I am not a parent. But in accessing these “memories,” I experience the scene in real time, and the emotional impact is far beyond what I can explain in words. I felt more grief in “reliving” this than I ever have in this life, in which there’s been plenty of loss.
To paint this image was the ultimate form of honor and relief, for this woman I never knew and yet, know intimately.
Say Something | 9” x 12” | Oil on paper | 2026
“Say Something” is a piece I don’t quite understand. It came in the way all of these black and whites do, during a sort of past life regression that somehow connects to my current life.
The story is of an old man who was mute, and the young man—I believe, a nephew—who was tasked to care for his uncle. The struggle was not in the caring, but in the complete inability to speak and therefore, the cavern created in the young man over what could never be heard.
In the memory, I was the young man. A partner, the old man.
I still hold grief over all of this, for all that went unsaid, for all that couldn’t be.
Time Reach | 9” x 12” | Oil on paper | 2026
“Time Reach” began as a black and white hand study, executed to practice painting hands without the pressure of using color. The true meaning of this painting only appeared with time, and now I see it as a representation of how we’re always reaching through past experience to make sense of what’s in front of us, as if we’re rooting around in the fog looking for something to hold onto. It is a constant feeling within me, especially as I get older and experiences seem to layer, one moment after the other until it seems as if everything is happening all at once.
