In your artist statement, you mention a natural disaster affecting how you perceive the world around you. How had this had an impact on your work?

"Well, the whole work is based on that natural disaster. In 2012, Hurricane Irene hit Schoharie County and washed away my house and everything that was inside of it. I had a BFA in Art, I got it from Sage, and all of my work just washed away. So, all of my work is based on portraitures of objects or things that remind me of my childhood, the faces I remember, and the process is that I wash away the whole thing. I use different chemicals, acrylic, oil, and anything I can use to give that natural disaster kind of feeling in the artwork."

What was your work like before this event took place?

"It was very De Kooning-esc. German expressionism, abstract expressionism, stuff like that. I worked strictly in oils because I was a traditionalist, but acrylic is such a water-based medium, that is the accelerator, and breaking water tension using oils and stuff like that gives it a spacey kind of look."

Do you do anything aside from painting?

"I only do paintings because it’s all I like to do. I don’t even draw, I just go straight to canvas. I’ll do maybe an outline of where I want things to go but I will not go passed that as far as drawing is concerned. The thing with acrylic is that is dries so quickly. I like working in the moment. For example, I’ll do five paintings within a few hours because I really want to capture that moment and be done."

Why do you think it is important to expose what we ignore through your artwork?

"It’s the little things, like what I was saying before, I like to make my art very quickly and that’s because it’s just a thing. I mean, it’s nothing really besides a picture on a wall. During the flood, everything washed away and I started out with nothing again. Nothing. So, I try to capture moments in time, one example being this guy in Schoharie County. He was definitely a military veteran and had hooks for arms, and he was digging through his things, trying to find what he could what he could salvage in his trailer but everything was just lost. I mean, there was a rash of suicides that happened afterwards because some people had nothing to live for anymore. That’s the kind of thing I’m trying to find out, the human emotions that are involved with loss, loving and childhood."

Do you have a favorite piece that you’ve made?

"I do a series called, A Mother and Son Can Never Be Divided, and there’s Part One, Two, Three, and Four. They’re all about things that went south basically. That series of paintings is about me and my mom, and that’s perfect to me."