July 29, 2026

The first art gallery I ever walked into

What I remember is leaving with more questions than I had when I walked in.  Before that day, I thought art was something you judged. You looked at a painting, decided whether you liked it, and moved on.  Instead, I found myself standing in front of one canvas far longer than I expected. I couldn't explain why it kept pulling me back. It wasn't the biggest piece in the room. It wasn’t in a subject that I was drawn to. Yet something about it refused to let me move on.

I've always been someone who likes understanding how things work, inside and out. Whether I was building furniture, working on boats, or experimenting with different materials, I wanted to know why something behaved the way it did.

That painting never answered me.  Oddly enough, that's exactly what made it unforgettable.  Looking back now, I think that afternoon quietly changed everything.  Not because I suddenly wanted to become an artist. Because I realized the best work doesn't give you all the answers.  It leaves room for curiosity.  I think that's why my studio looks the way it does today.  There are cans of spray paint sitting beside fiberglass resin. WD-40 next to wall plaster. Carburetor cleaner beside acrylic paint. To someone else it probably looks chaotic. To me, it feels like possibility.

I'm still chasing that same feeling I had in the gallery.

The feeling of discovering something I didn't know existed five minutes earlier.  Maybe that's why so many of my paintings go through twenty or thirty layers before they're finished.

I'm not trying to recreate an image…I'm trying to discover one.

And if a client ever tells me they noticed something new months after bringing one of my paintings home, I'll know I've managed to pass along a little of what I experienced that first afternoon in a gallery. That's still the goal.