Like I'm whispering into the rain.

My sister Erin convinced me to start this blog and an accompanying Flickr account. She says she's been encouraged by the feedback for her own work and has allowed her to network with other artists.

Frankly, I don't really like being on the computer anymore. I'd rather be reading, or outside, or with my girlfriend Hannah, or in the studio, or playing games with my brother-in-law. Until I manage to start scanning and photographing my own work I must simply write about myself to at least form the habit of posting.

I've worked in the only art supply store in Gainesville (unless you count Michael's) since August 2006, with a brief occupational infidelity at a bakery several months ago. The job certainly has its perks: I meet a lot of local artists and art students, am exposed to various old and new media, and have a pretty wicked discount on art supplies.

Until high school I almost exclusively only used graphite and pen, usually starkly contrasted black an white abstract and representational work (rarely any sketches from life) and then started finally experimenting with color with gouache and watercolors. Eventually my mother taught me to cut linoleum, a medium that worked well with my style, if labor-intensive. Since I'd moved to Gainesville and started working at the store, I've been overwhelmed with different media, and have only recently been able to get outside of my closed-sketchbook world, and working on canvas.

I seem to alternate between visual art and writing every few years, usually one form of expression eclipsing the other for the time being. I haven't been writing much this past year; I've been doing a lot more work in my sketchbooks. I've tried to dedicate a couple of moleskines for writing poetry but . . . it's been difficult to write about anything but one thing. In January my best friend Derek killed himself. Whenever I sit down to write something, anything meaningful, full of feeling and truth, all I can write about is him, and the last day I spent with him. That entire event was terrible and perplexing. It was heartwrenching for me and my friends, and I don't think we're done dealing with it. I am however, tired of feeling it. Every so often, I will deliberately try to write to remind myself how to feel it, out of duty, or love, or spite, but currently I've made it only an option. There's nothing like a pig-headed unwillingness to look facts in the face to see us through.

Instead, I've been painting.