Various aspects of my experiences have lead to, and contribute to my art works. Extensive training and working in fields that required specialized learning, teaching, inventing, innovating and creating continue to inform my efforts, recently in the graphic arts, and throughout my educations; fields as diverse as writing, hairstyling, counseling, facilitating group trainings, social work, and, most importantly, Music !

      Musical terms, such as tempo, rhythm, harmony, movement, tension/resolution and counterpoint seem particularly apt when describing the subtleties of literary development, performance art, and the like. Ad lib, short for “at liberty” in Latin, is a term that musicians use to mean extemporaneous melodic innovation. Jazz-playing is the epitome of ‘spontaneous creativity’ or what is now called Improvisation. Improvisation has its rules and constraints, however, and therein the challenges it presents to each artist searching to resolve and master such creative hurdles. The complexity of spontaneously improvising an instrumental solo must contain necessary integrative features to be considered well-composed; movement, focus, rhythmic exploration, subtleties of tonal inflection, exploring chordal structure, for example, are all elements of exemplary construction. Performing for decades, as a Jazz-improvising musician, I've relied heavily upon the intricacies of those subjective-creative experiences t0 create my cross-over art works. The creative impulses are identical!

          It seems ironic that the so-called ‘process’ can be learned but not taught. In other words, each stylistic nuance flows out of what preceded it, into the next … and on to greater degrees of developmental tension and resolution. The process flows intuitively!

          Much has been written about the phenomenon known as 'Flow'.          Musicians use the term 'Groove' and athletes "get into" a certain 'Zone'.        Flow, then, is a human capacity, a state of ultra-focused attention, trance-like, rapt, yet intentionally directed. As applied to image-invention, one might say that ’the first brushstroke determines and leads to the next, and then the next, intuitively, ….. until a composition completes itself, so to speak. There is total immersion in the doing, both emotionally and intellectually.

          There are many schools or systems of painting and drawing that rely on, or are inspired by, meditative influences, subconscious urgings, Italian Scarabocchio, Doodling, Zen tangling and other serendipitous approaches; other pattern-ridden methods.

        The hallmarks that define my style include: overall complexity and unity, originality, movement, multiple focal points and vanishing points.... and, a certain fertility that evokes engagement. I claim this idiom and name it ‘Improvisational Art’.