Connect What is your favorite type of art to create?

Painting is where I ask the questions I can’t answer any other way. I’m drawn to work that hides something, that rewards the person who slows down and really looks. A rabbit on a shelf. A quote running through a figure in pain. A child preserving the last tree in a bell jar. The detail that changes everything once you see it. I want the viewer to feel like they found something. Like the painting was waiting for them specifically to notice.

Where do you find inspiration?

Inspiration lives everywhere I look. The news, which is hard to follow sometimes but impossible to ignore. Biology textbooks. Science fiction. Philosophy, spirituality, the big unanswerable questions that have occupied people forever. I read widely and think constantly, and eventually something won’t leave me alone. That’s usually when a painting starts. Not from a plan but from a feeling that something needs to be said, and that I might be the one to say it.

What would you do with $25,000?

Honestly? Art supplies, first. Anyone who makes things knows how fast that $25,000 could disappear in the best possible way. But the bigger dream is residencies. Time away from the routine, in new places, making work without the usual interruptions. I’ve wanted that kind of focused time for years. And there’s a steampunk festival in Oamaru, New Zealand that’s been on my radar forever. Part research, part inspiration, part sheer joy. A working artist needs all three.