Overwhelmingly my work deals in masculinity, especially the masculine body. Bodies tell a story best. We're attuned to reading their signs, their minor expressions and postures. Knowingly and unknowingly we read a lot into the human body. Representations of bodies are always taken as representations -- which is to say, charged with meaning. The danger in that is that you can say things you didn't mean. My work obscures the body in some way. Often I veer towards abstraction or else I place the figure in an unreal space. In a recent piece which exhibited at Lotus Gallery I portrayed Beowulf and Grendel as the heroic and monstrous male bodies. The figures play with anatomy, colour, and surface while being stripped of other hints as to their identities. The nude, removed from clothes or armour or clues as to their time and place, stands less as an individual and more as a symbolic body or archetype. It's easy to draw ideas from an unrestricted body. People can run away with that visual. I try to take something that we're designed to scrutinize and shroud it, or place it among abstract surroundings. I am inspired by other artists' enthusiasm for art. And even more than that I'm inspired by hearing the meaning that a single piece or artist can have to others. It isn't just the story within an image that energizes me but also the story an image develops for itself as it persist through time. I continue to persist as an artist, myself. I'm currently preparing work for two shows in Edmonton during 2019. And after that there is still a lifetime of painting to begin!