Paintings & Prints

Solstice Angel

Started on winter solstice 2024 and completed in early 2025, inspiration began by sketching in my back yard with a gentle snow falling while listening to Jethro Tull's "Solstice Bells." Seven druids and seven maidens dance in seven time around a supernatural seven horned, many-eyed angel figure inspired by Irish mythology and descriptions from Revelations. This painting is my prayer for divine intervention for the good of the world in 2025. 

Long Train Runnin'

Inspired by my love of trains, proximity to the oldest B&O railroad station behind my house on which cargo and transit trains still rumble past every few hours. With a touch of motivation from Irish mythology and the Doobie Brothers, this painting is an embrace of the rails and chug that I have always loved.

Danu

The Irish goddess Danu, keeper of the earth and all her critters, is celebrated in this painting, swirling together four lans and sea scapes of the earth into the heavens, with metallic seals of a trinity of animal figures in each corner (rabbits, foxes, birds, and dolphins).

Eclipse

In 2024, I was fortunate to be able to be in the totality of the eclipse as it passed over Cleveland. With the iconic totality in the center, this captures my wonder at seeing the dark of night in the middle of the day over the flats, with the sun's  red flares on the edges of the moon and the streetlights of Cleveland coming on around the horizon with the city skyline surrounding us.

String Cheese Incident at Red Rocks

In 2024, I was priviledged to see my favorite band, the String Cheese Incident, play a 3 night run at Red Rocks Ampitheater in Colorado. My 176th time seeing them, they had special guests themed each night, represented by the New Orleans, Colorado, and Nashville icons overlayed in three corners.

Galactica (Love Burn 2024)

After attending Love Burn (regional Burning Man event in Miami) in February 2024, i was inspired to create this piece that groups some of the most iconic art I experienced, including my camp, Skybar, with my eyes art hung on the front, Harvey the Disco Cat  shooting lasers (the first mutant vehicle I got to dance on), El Pulpo Magnifico spewing fire, and more.

Arboreal

This painting was self therrapy for me. Following my divorce, I needed to reclaim my space and learn to reclaim my joy. I succeeded in the latter largely through help from the forest behind my house, drawing strength and resilience from the trees around me every day. Thanks to that, I was able to reclaim some space on the walls of my house with this painting offered in recognition and thanks to the joy that the trees helped me reclaim.

Heron Chase

My dogs, Ringo and Penny, are the light of my life. Taking them daily to splash in Rock Creek behind my house is one of the greatest gifts I receive in life. Watching them chase herons, secure in the knowledge they'll never actually catch one, sprinkled by droplets of water flung in their pursuit, and in awe of their majestic swooping wings as they take off, brings me joy every time.

Equilibrium

Following my divorce, I was a soul lost in darkness and despair. Every time I tried to stand, every time I had even a tiny grasp on solace, I would fall over and it would all slip away again. I knew I needed to find balance, find my equilibrium again, but I couldn't even muster a very basic base inspiration. So I grabbed at what I could: the concepts of the rising phoenix and the transformed butterfly, i made them iron-clad, with many places to hold on to, many windows of opportunity, and made them into this visual mantra for myself to lead myself out of the darkness.

GreenBeorn

Inspired at the Greenbelt, MD Green Man Festival and borrowing from the character Beorn from Lord of the Rings, this painting is a whimsical trip into a pagan fantasy world.

Tuatha de Dannon

The Tuatha are the mythical Irish creator-chidren of the goddess Danu, who existed before the elves and fairies and druids, or perhaps evolved into them. This painting is a reclaiming of an image I originally designed years earlier and had tattooed on my chest as part of a larger tribute. I needed to reclaim the image and my tattoo for myself after the tribute ended in pain, so this painting explores my love of the earth and music and the cosmos with a particular nod to supernatural beings, begging God and the Tuatha for help in my journey to reclaim my self for my self.

Mother Earth

One of the first paintings I ever made and continue to hold dear on my wall, Mother Earth is a 2001-esque projection of Gaia in her own womb, encapsulated in this bright blue ball spinning free that we call home.

Black Bear

My happy place is a rock scramble in Shenandoah called Bear Fence Mountain, a mohawk of rock jutting from the top of the ridge with boulders you can leap across from one to the next and 360 degree views of the shenandoa valley to the west and the piedmont down to DC on the east. Titled after the Railroad Earth song and with a number of my favorite Shenandoah waterfalls and swimming holes grouped together in the silhouette of the bear, I return to my happy place always with this painting.

Chameau Tuareg

Also one of my earliest paintings that i hold dear, this one commemorates my experience in 2002 of riding with a caravan of Tuareg salt traders from Timbuktou to Arouanne in Mali. At times, the dunes were endless but scorchingly bright under the light of the crescent moon.

Holler in the Moonlight

A four-panel set of paintings, this one was started as a sketch while watching Larry Keel play "Holler in the Moonlight" at my friend's barn party near Shepherd's Ford VA. Those barn parties are always a hell of a time, with the notes from all the instruments reverberating from the woods to the mountaintops.

Safari

This triptych of three herd animals in front of Mt. Kilimanjaro was inspired by a weekend safari I took while on an extended work trip with a USAID project in Tanzania. The dry season and low tourist turnout that year enabled me to get close up to every imaginable animal.

Malcolm X Park

The Sunday drum circle at Malcolm X Park in DC was my first lifeline when I arrived solo to DC from college in 2003. It has continued to inspire me to this day and is a great place filled with joy music and dancing and community.