From January, '05 at Plaza Design in Eureka

While wandering through the local boutiques, we see a celebration of the arts and crafts of many different cultures. There are amazing innovations by talented designers, trained at hundreds of art programs across the globe. There are vibrant new colors and textures, new shapes and materials, repackaging everyday objects in every store.

For an artist like myself, who loves color and pattern, these stores hold treasure troves of inspiration.

I see an incredibly intricate Islamic geometric design on a vase, and I grab it and run. I steal all of these ideas around me and I hoard them in my sketchbook. I sit and I doodle them, processing them into my own working vocabulary of shapes and patterns.

I then lift these linear inventions out of my book, and use them as the skeletal framework for paintings. On top of this line work I will lay the loudest, brightest colors I can muster up; because I want my own work to stand out on these here boutique walls.