How long have you been creating?

I've been a fine art photographer for over 16 years. I began photographing immediately after high school when I traded in a word-processor (graduation gift from dad) for my first camera. I chose to be a mostly self-taught artist in order to free myself to create entirely inspired artwork that surpasses boundaries of time and traditional technique.

What is your media of choice?

I do fine art photography and focus my attention on what I call figurative abstracts as well as still lifes, landscapes and erotica. For a time there was a huge debate between the aesthetic beauty of black and white versus color photography; Regardless, I've always used them interchangably depending on what I have around or what the subject demands. This year, I completely switched over the digital and have rarely look back. By shooting digitally, I can see immediate results for my commercial work, I have minimal wasted images, less storage and most importantly I am protecting myself and the environment from harmful photographic chemicals.

What are your motivations for creating?

Good question! I recently did a life purpose workshop with my partner in which you come to a point of summarizing your essence in a phrase or a couple of words....a sort of mantra for the way in which you choose to live your life - the rest radiates outwards from there creating your happiness on a daily basis. Mine was "Embracing Inifinite Beauty." Translately, it means that I see beauty in everything around me - the homeless woman on the street, the artist in his studio or ashen trees in Yellowstone after a large fire; they all have a story to tell me and luckily I get to share it with you. Lately, I've been taking small voyages with my partner in which we simply slow down and commune with our natural surroundings. Oftentimes, I pick up items on a hike - a dried piece of kelp, a fern fiddle, a bone or a feather. Then when I get to a place of pause, I gently place the obj ects against a natural backdrop, pull out my camera and honor its beauty. When I'm done, I leave the items and simply let them return to the earth in which they came.

What other artists or movements inform your work?

I am inspired by many female photographers like Margaret Bourke-White, Imogen Cunningham and Sally Mann. The surrealist movement has definitely informed my work including the master of surrealist photography Man Ray. Honestly though, when I visit a museum or art gallery, I am incredibly inspired and immediately want to come home and create. The rawness of ideas and artistic expression is tangible.

Read anything good lately?

I enjoy reading artist biographies (The Diaries of Anais Nin, Picasso's biography, Lives of the Muses etc). My last books were Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver and Eleven Minutes. However, as I evolve spiritually, my "studies" are now including books on shamanism, cosmic journeys, utopian society, feminism and metaphysics which is already informing my present work.

Tell us about some of your artistic goals for 2007.

This has been an incredibly ambitious year. One of the things I did was shift the focus of my art by turning it into a successful career which includes commercial and graphic design work. I finally fused all of my passions and decided to work almost exclusively for myself! This year I also sought out and found someone to represent me in the next phase of my artist career. I have an incredible amount of trust and confidence in this person's love of my work and connections. I learned that in order to succeed, I actually needed to relinguish some of the responsibility to the universe and trust that I will be supported and allowed to continue my life's passion.

What would you like your fellow EQSQ artists and our collectors to know about you and/or your work?

When most people talk about my work, "unique" is the word that comes up over and over again. I hit on the figurative abstract stuff while in college during a creative photography class and I'll tell you...I just knew that I had finally crossed over a barrier as an artist. I wasn't just taking pictures of walls and windows anymore. That body of work (the "Smoke and Mirrors" series) finally took me to the next escalon. My style and technique are uniquely my own and yet I have tapped into a visual language that is universally understood.