Some mornings I get a coffee and come to this place by the river, behind the enormous office buildings, and sit in the grass and watch the people going into work. I like that world, that working world. I like seeing it. It's a typical day for them and I'm here seeing it. The buildings are big and beautiful and I imagine the people in there are young and full of energy. 

New painting: Fire

Fire

I keep making these types of paintings where I trace my hands and make the picture around them. I'm sort of obsessed with touch, with the power of touch, with the idea of art that brings people in, uses more of the senses, involves touch somehow. I'll never forget going to museums and galleries and all the artwork being roped off and all the guards and how protected everything was. I think  artists want to connect to people. Some do. Maybe not all. I think if you can make art that someone can lay touch, it would be something special and different. Touch is so powerful to me. A while ago i went to an exhibition at a church and they had a section with a bunch of plastic replicas of the beautiful marble religious statues for blind people to be able to see what they had there. I was really touched by that. I thought, that's the way. That's a way. That's personal. That's intimate. Touch. Hands. The heat of the hands, reflecting off of a surface back to the hands. Energy begets energy. One honest action begets another honest action. I'm still so interested in that interaction, in making things that bridge the space (physical, emotional) between the person seeing it and you, what's in your heart, where you were at when you made it. Just wanna be honest about all this stuff. I wanna tell you guys what's real to me. I wanna be truthful with this and not hold back. I don't think, actually I know, that if you care about something you have to be open and honest about what it means to you. So I'm trying to do that more with my artwork. Trying to explain everything about where it came from and why. All that being said, hope you get something out of it.

New picture: Collage

Collage

I think about losing the people I love. I'm still just a kid.

Figure on his knees

Enchantment, wonder

In this picture, there's a man with a hat on and his arms are up in the air. He's excited. He's looking at his son. His son is playing with a toy airplane. In the middle of the man's chest there's an airplane (you have to look at it sideways to see it). It's a jet airplane, more sophisticated than what the boy has. I don't know what the picture is about exactly. I wanted to make a tactile picture for the first time. The airplanes are both touchable, meaning they're not flat, they actually come out of the picture. I'm interested very much in touch. I went to an art exhibition in a church once here in Prague and there was a section for blind people where the art that was hanging on the wall had been remade in plastic molds to the side so that you could they could touch and see what the picture was with their hands. maybe because it was in a church I felt this was special. to be able to use your hands, especially in a church where things are often times roped off or made of fine materials like gold and jewels or fine cloth, which I always felt as a kid cut off from, discouraged from interacting with. Especially on the altar if you've been to church. I always had the feeling that it was off limits, that you shouldn't go up there without permission. I don't know. I started to become very interested in color and materials and touch at that point. A few pictures I've made do come off the page in that way and are meant to be touched. I even made an entire set of pictures that really weren't visible and wouldn't be until they had been exposed to touch for a while. They were white on white, but once people started touching them, the oils and dirt from people's hands would bring out the picture, make it visible to the eye, or more visible. 

Jewel

Butterflies