Connect What is your favorite type of art to create?

Plein air oil painting. Cityscapes and landscapes. I paint on location, standing in the wind and light, because I believe a place deserves to be witnessed before it’s captured. Not photographed. Witnessed. What moves me most are the ordinary places that hold extraordinary meaning for the people who love them. A familiar street. A building someone passes every day without realizing they’d miss it. I paint what a place feels like to belong to. And once someone sees their world that way, it stays.

Where do you find inspiration?

In the city and in nature. A Chicago street at golden hour. A forest after rain. The stillness of open water before the world wakes up. These places don’t announce themselves. They just exist, quietly, until someone stops long enough to feel them. Plein air painting taught me to stop. Meditation taught me to stay. I’m drawn to beauty that exists before anyone names it. My job is to show people it was there all along.

What would you do with $25,000?

I would create art books preserving Chicago’s neighborhoods through oil paintings of the homes and streets that define them. Not just landmarks. The places ordinary people love and fear losing. A corner store. A familiar block. A house someone grew up in. Something families could hold and say: that’s my city. Chicago has a story worth preserving. I want to paint it before it’s gone.