The Intersection of Architecture and Atmosphere

As you navigate through my website, you will see many photographs. Over the past 25 years, I’ve shot more than 100,000 images, beginning my journey while earning a Bachelor of Design with a Major in Architecture from the University of Florida. All of them represent memories and experiences.

While photographing for fun over the years, I was always applying the composition principles I studied in school, employing the rule of thirds and searching out the golden ratio. Unknowingly, I was compiling a library of reference photos for a future purpose: a different interpretation using new and unfamiliar materials and methods I had never picked up before.

From Architecture to Pastel

Experimenting with pastels for the first time during the depths of the pandemic isolation, I reignited a childhood passion for art and discovered a new talent. Drawing from my training in architecture, design, and photography, I merge the rules of proportion, scale, and perspective with expressions of light, shadow, and intensity of color.

My artistic vision is deeply rooted in the structural mastery and color innovations of the past and modern masters. I draw profound inspiration from the bold palettes and dynamic energy of Fauvism and Expressionism—looking to Henri Matisse, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Raoul Dufy, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and Max Pechstein. At the same time, my technical approach is guided by the draftsmanship and mark-making of Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Paul Cézanne, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Above all, I am inspired by my lived experiences. Walking the historic Tokaido highway from Kyoto to Tokyo, taking over 13,000 photos along the way, profoundly impacted my artistic perspective in ways no book about Hiroshige’s woodblock prints or Frank Lloyd Wright’s time in Japan could.

A man smiling, wearing a light blue button-up shirt, seated at a table at an outdoor restaurant.
A man in a white shirt, khaki shorts, and sunglasses is sitting and leaning against a stone wall inside a stone arch corridor, smiling at the camera.
A young man in a pink shirt and white shorts sitting on a rocky wall inside a tunnel made of stone, smiling at the camera. A blue backpack is on the ground beside him, and other people are seen walking in the background.
Modern architectural building with shiny metallic surfaces and curved design.

Recognition & Professional Practice

My original pastel works are largely based on these photographic travel records. Today, I’m embracing and enjoying learning new pastel techniques, expanding into watercolor and acrylics, and continually returning to sketching and drawing with pencil, ink, and charcoal.

As an Associate Member of the Pastel Society of America and a Signature Member of the Degas Pastel Society, my work has garnered critical recognition. Recent milestones include being featured as a spotlight artist on NPR and PBS’s Artistry in Motion, exhibiting at premier juried events like the Winter Park Sidewalk Art Festival and the Mount Dora Arts Festival, and having works acquired by the Orlando Museum of Art “Art in Bloom” and private collections across the United States.

I hope you enjoy these new interpretations of my experiences and perhaps they will make you look at yours in a new way as well!

Close-up photo of a modern clock with white hands and Roman numerals on a blue background.
Two people standing outside near wooden buildings, one showing something to the other, with greenery around.