I have always loved art. Doodling, drawing, coloring, painting ... you name it, I enjoy it.

While at Bradley University, I decided to go for an Art minor. Aside from the basic, required art courses, I took some drawing courses as well. However, my cartoon caricatures were not deemed as an "acceptable" form of art in these higher level classes.

Rather than give up on art altogether, I enrolled in a painting course on a whim. The techniques used in painting were completely different than those in drawing. After a few old drawing habits were broken, I discovered a true talent for painting. As I continued taking more higher level painting courses, I created my own new techniques.

The painting instructor had a strict rule that all objects or images being referenced for a painting needed to be print outs, photographs, or physically infront of us. I, however, wanted to combine my love of computers with art by creating my own images in Adobe Photoshop and referencing them from my laptop. My instructor argued that the computer screen distorted the color, hue, intensity, and the overall image as it acted as a barrier between the virtual and actual world. But the end results displayed on my canvases were something that couldn't be argued.

I began painting from my laptop, whether I had changed anything with the image's composition or not. My laptop screen was something I was familiar with. Any distortion it created only allowed me to further paint the image in my own visual representation. I have also found that the more involved I've been in creating the referenced image, the more I enjoy painting the actual image on the canvas. I rarely will create paintings with the same subject matter, however, I have a series of paintings referenced from images I created in Photoshop by cutting out just the wings of butterflies and rearranging them on my screen.