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	Artist Statement Art, to me, is a number of different things. Most non-artists judge art by what I call the "pretty picture" scale, and there's nothing wrong with that. But there are times and places where art needs to be more. Art challenges convention, it inspires and moves. Art creates mood and forces us to question things about ourselves. I try to balance as many of the different styles of art as I can. I grew up a realist, as I'm sure most artists do. And to me nothing quite showcases an artists talents the way realism does. There are interesting qualities to abstract and impressionist works, however, that can not be fully achieved in the realm of realism. And so I try in my own way to meld these qualities in each of my pieces...dubbing my work "photorealist-expressionism" because of the realistic imagery and colorful, expressive nature of the application of medium. My main focus has been portraiture for some time, striving to prove my worth by drawing what many artists admit they can not. And I take pride in the fact that I have had success doing it in such a way as to have people ask if my work is photography or some sort of digital output of computer generated imagery. At the same time I yearn to say more in my work, because "why not just take a picture?" as I am sometimes asked. So I manipulate my images digitally, changing colors and cropping. Sometimes merging more than one image or stripping out elements that don't work. Once I have finished my design, I transate it to my canvas by hand. I work mostly in pencil because it is what I am most comfortable with, but I do dabble in acrylics and have recently began to embrace the incorporation of digital outputs in my work as well.