About & Artist Statement

I grew up painting. Painting is what I have loved to do the most for the longest period of time. Ever since I could hold a pencil or a paintbrush, I was practicing. Not practicing formally per se, but naively, viscerally and cathartically. With formal practice, the compulsion to create in the former methods became what is my work.

In the beginning, usually accompanied by my grandfather, artist Robert Yonke, I tried to replicate, distort, emulate, abstract, trace, and disassemble all subject matters. Creating around my grandfather was a lesson in freedom, experimentation, and design, not discipline and rule-following.

For all of the aforementioned reasons, I paint the way I do. Being a painter is my truest characteristic, which will remain the case throughout this life, and I hope to one day be considered a great one.