I have a deep love and passion for anything visual. I see all of life with great devotion to composition and color. Beyond that, it is my belief that a really good piece of art also possesses energy and emotion. That’s what makes good art great. My mediums of choice right now are acrylics and graphics. I also work with just about any medium I can find as I’m a very experimental person. To keep me fresh, I like to work on multiple pieces using various mediums, all at the same time. That way I’m never bored. This keeps my creative juices flowing and allows me to bounce ideas off each other. So give me some good music and the creativity just flows.

Sculpture

Wood

Wood is a medium that I use to sculpt into old looking or devilish faces. That way, I can't screw up to bad. The wood I use comes from my wood pile. It’s nothing really special except for my ability to rummage through a pile and, find just the right piece of firewood. And yes I would teach others if asked. My method of carving is to carve the features, nose, eyes, and so on, oversized. This allows me to burn the wood with a torch and then, as I wire brush the charcoal off, it comes to an amazingly smooth surface as though it was wet sanded. I then bleach out the burnt color or leave it, depending on my mood, or stain the piece. Simple as that!

Metal

When working with metal, I prefer copper, but will sometimes use regular sheet metal. And, of coarse, good old fashion steel is just great. With copper, I’ll usually patina for the finish, and also sheet metal, as in the fish here. I rusted it then painted it with acrylic paint. This metal fish has glass as it’s main structure and I built around it. I know, I need a better picture. Most of my metal works are for outdoors. They keep looking better as they age since they are supposed to look old.

Glass

Mosaic

My mosaics are done by copper foiling each piece of glass. I leave glass out of areas to bring in another dimension to the pieces. By looking thru the shapes created by the absence of glass, and moving your head back and forth, you’ll see the new dimension as if the glass is floating in mid air. Whether the light is from behind or in front, even at night, you will notice it’s always changing. Although you can’t see thru it on the internet.
I call my business Rustic Studios, because I live in a Rustic log cabin out in the country. I called the ranch Rustic Ranch so why not Rustic Studios! The reason for using studios instead of studio is that it sounded better. The artsy thing would be to say one of my studios is inside and one is the entire outside. I do consider the outside my other studio since a whole lot of stuff I work on happens out there, like, digging through wood piles. When I build the panels that I paint on or, as I call them, my boards, it’s messy and dusty and takes up a lot of room in my studio. To deal with this mess, I now have a separate studio for glass, wood and metal. This makes it much easier. Now, when painting, I can continue creating my texture which requires making a mess without sacrificing my other projects. When I am painting, I like scuffing the paint on with dry brushes and even using my hands to paint. Although some of my paintings are on canvas, there aren’t many. I find canvas too smooth and it doesn’t scuff well. For me, it's just too everyday perfect and it's manufactured.
Noah
Mary