I am a southern artist in that I was born in Nashville, Tennessee and lived most of my life in a small town just west of Nashville. I lived in a Norman Rockwell, corner drugstore world but voraciously read Nietzsche and Jung. I was introduced to the writings of Chaucer, Dante and Brautingan. I was living with reproductions of Thomas Gainsborough's "Blue Boy" and Thomas Lawrence's "Pinkie", rosters made of dried corn and beans but I was looking at Jasper Johns and Jim Dine. This created a dichotomy between my hometown life and intellectual pursuits. This duality of spirit and thought continues to inform my art and ideas about it. Now when I paint, draw or make works of art, I think about my past, my history and my now. I always seem to paint people, faces and figure. I believe I am looking for a connection, emotional, a certain gesture that speaks about our humanity, our biography, our wit. I have often been accused of being overly romantic and trying to only paint beautiful things. Sometimes this is true, I like to accentuate the beautiful in an often ugly world, but I am not naive and I also want my art to reflect my time and my truth. Although talking about realism in art as truth gives me a little chuckle because the idea of a naturalistic painting being something other than an illusion or illustration of reality is laughable. It is a lie by nature. A lie made beautiful by the artist. As a painter and especially a painter of people I am often told by critics and academics that I am a throw-back to an earlier time, I believe they are not looking deep enough. I think my work is more conceptual than may appear at first glance, more thought provoking and not married to reality for realities sake. I still like the idea of painting and moving oil, grease and wax around to create something numinous. Painters understand the connection to the medium. Everyone else must just marvel at the product or condemn it for being just paint. Chuck close said: "I always thought that one of the reasons why a painter likes especially to have other painters look at his or her work is the shared experience of having pushed paint around." The act of painting creates a relationship between the artists and their material, sometimes this relationship causes a tension that creates an opportunity for exploration, and at other times the familiarity with the medium generates a confidence that evokes risk-taking.