(and this is the part where I start talking about myself, the artist)
^On the floor and wearing a black turtleneck 'cause apparently I'm goth now. .
Howdy! I'm the artist you're meeting!
I spend a lot of my time existing and trying to be creative about it.
I also spend a lot of my time covered in paint.
These are some of my early works as a secular artist:
Painting from Montessori Pre-K of what I assume is me and my twin sister, or my mom and my aunt. It's up to interpretation.
But I really like the little smiley sun!
A damn good watercolor pencil drawing of some pompous fish I did when I was like 9 or something
My aunt hung this on her refrigerator for a time, and goodness gracious was I flying close to the sun. She misspelled Pikachu but that's ok.
Where is he going?
I didn't study art in school--regrettably, in high school I chose to take the Latin AP course instead of the art class, but at least now I can remember approximate details about the Aeneid.
Not at all regrettably, I majored in English language and literature at The Catholic University of America. This means I can tell you way more about the imagery in Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 than anything about painting. But I really do love writers who love painting like Kurt Vonnegut and Flannery O'Connor.
And maybe I should have chosen to study art in graduate school, but I much prefer learning what I learn in the lay graduate studies program at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. A lot of my artwork ends up becoming an expression of what I'm preoccupied with when doing my theology homework. Case in point: here's an unnecessarily moody Ash Wednesday selfie of me scowling with a gouache painting I did of one of the pears from Book II of St. Augustine's Confessions.
Like...like why..?
Anyway, the fact that y'all have been such sweet supporters of my vocation as an artist gives me a lot to praise and thank God for--there is nothing so humbling as hearing back from y'all that my artwork is featured in your prayer spaces. That's a big-time Incarnational gift for me, and I'm honored to be a part of your time and space. I'm going to stop writing this bio before I start crying about how special this all is to me. I cry a lot.
Ok, here's a significantly less moody selfie so that y'all don't think I'm a tortured artist...also here I am with some polite dogs: