Connect What is your favorite type of art to create?

I paint the overlooked machinery of America—the refineries, rail yards, ports, and concrete most people speed past. Where others see grime, I find poetry: light cutting through steel, heat shimmering off pipelines, industry breathing like a living thing. My work turns harsh, industrial landscapes into something strangely human—gritty, cinematic, and unapologetically alive.

Where do you find inspiration?

Inspiration isn’t polite—it’s loud, raw, and waiting right off the highway. Right now I’m chasing it mile by mile on a road trip through the Rust Belt, Gulf refineries, Texas, and forgotten industrial corridors of the East Coast. I pull over where the air smells like fuel and steel, where sunrise and sunset light hits pipes just right. These places don’t ask to be painted—they demand it.

What would you do with $25,000?

I’d take that $25,000 and trade speed for depth—start in Germany’s industrial spine, where steel breathes and history hums beneath concrete. I’d wander, not rush—sketching faces in cafés, filling notebooks with the mysterious poetry of strangers and smokestacks. No more drive-by moments. I’d slow time down, live inside it, and paint the soul of places most people pass without seeing.