"No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition."- Claude Monet

While painting is not my medium of choice, this quote remains fundamental in how I view art and why it is so important in my life. For me art is an insight to a person's mind and their imagination and beliefs. When an artist explains their own work you are getting an intimate look into who they really are, what is important to them and how they choose to express themselves.

Now for a person whose site mascot is a fluffy chaotic blue WereTiger you might wonder why I would even say such a thing. In reality that creature and others like her, are an insight into my imagination, something that is found in very piece of art I have ever created. Imagination in any form, is extremely personal, no one else will ever look at something or create it the same way you do. Your imagination is your individuality in a world of conformity. For an artist this allows one to stand out in their own community.

I was born in 1987 and from an early age I had understanding of what death was, something that always seemed to make me different from children my own age. I lost my father a month after I was born to cancer and was raised by my single mother all my. I was also an only child, the closet thing I ever had to a sibling was my friends or family pet. My father was a wonderful self-taught artist and passed on a great deal of his gift to me for which I am very grateful. I have a few of his drawings and am still amazed by the photographic quality of his work with graphite.

As a young child I was surrounded by fantasy and mythology, my bedtime stories at the ages of two and three where never normal children's stories like the Pokey Little Puppy but rather lengthily novels. My mother would always read me a chapter or two of The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings every night, to which I have committed to memory even to this day. By age seven I was reading them to myself and had discovered The Chronicles of Narnia which remains one of my favorite book series. My interest in fantasy genre art can largely be attributed to these books and others like them.

During my childhood my mother and I moved around a lot as she tried to make a better living for me and struggled to keep a roof over our heads. I was never in any individual school more than a year max until fourth grade. At that point in my life I never imagined the friends I had made when we finally settled down would be so important in my life or be as influential to me as an artist.

In high school, I really had no interest in art outside of it being my hobby and an easy way for me to boost my GPA. I focused heavily on my science classes, thanking all the biology and anatomy classes I could, given at the time I wanted to study Marine Biology and work with sharks, that was supposed to be for the rest of my life.

In my senior year I lost one my closest friends, in a car accident. I was devastated by the sudden death and it is something I have still not officially accepted or gotten over. Oddly enough it was that very friend that always supported my 'hobby', saying that I was missing my 'true' calling, that I could have been a lot better.

During my first year of college I did enjoy the science classes and learning about my chosen field however the death of my friend weighed heavily on my mind and her words to me. I desperately needed an outlet and turned to something that had always been in the back of my mind, art. It allowed me to struggle and work through my problems and clear my mind, it's the best therapy I've ever found. After taking my first college art class I realized what I had been missing in my life, I had discovered what I was truly passionate about. From late 2006 I started to get serious about my art which was a drastic change from it just being something I did to pass the time.

My use of nature as a subject matter however, was always something that I carried throughout my life. I love the outdoors and enjoy spending time with animals, normally more so then people. To me an animal is a living work of art and should be respected as such. The Tiger had always been one animal that fascinated me but it did not become a main stable in my work until I started to pick up photography in my sophomore year of high school.

I had visited a zoo for a project and wanted to get black and white pictures of some of the big cats there. I had wandered behind the group I had went with and was a little disappointed that the Tiger was on the other side of his enclosure and my zoom lens wasn,t good enough to capture something from that distance. Noticing I had used up my role of film anyway, I crouched down to change the roll onto to look back up and notice that the cat had moved and was now staring at me eye level. It was a rather humbling experience even with the glass between us. The Tiger didn't move and I was able to get some very nice shots of him. However that experience and locking eyes with the animal is something that has stayed with me to this day.