I think the Wild West got into my DNA pretty early.

Growing up, I watched Western after Western with my grandpa.

Cowboys, gunfights, horses, wide-open landscapes, larger-than-life characters—it all stuck. I’ve been fascinated by the spirit and mythology of the American West ever since.

I’ve also always had a slightly strange imagination.

For years, I spent most of my energy learning how to make art—drawing, composition, light, color, and eventually falling completely in love with oil painting.

What took me longer to figure out was that the weird, funny, sometimes ridiculous ideas bouncing around in my head weren’t something separate from my art. They were probably the most important part.

So that’s where my work is headed now: taking the Western world I’ve loved since I was a kid and letting my imagination loose inside of it.

Sometimes that means a traditional cowboy. Sometimes things get a little weirder.

Either way, I want the paintings to have story, beauty, personality, and a sense that anything might happen just outside the frame.

At the heart of it all is probably what I’ve always loved most about the cowboy in the first place:

Freedom.