I never created any of this to share or show publicly, yet here I am.

Life is beautiful and brutal, often at the same time.

Like you, I have dealt with my fair share of losses, and I have struggled mightily through them, at times directly with the meaning of my own existence and the nature of a loving energy we call God.

Loss is both universal and cruelly personal; there is no degree, it just “is,” in a way that we, alone, carry, without comparison.

For as long as I can remember, I have sought to understand the duality of love and loss. In my private moments, I create to understand the space before words, where my soul feels safe to expand in the wonder of its vulnerabilities.

Through my work with grieving children, children in treatment for cancer and the terminally ill, I have come to realize I can’t hold onto anything - including my creations. Recently, I began to give my work away, because I didn’t want to profit from this experience. Then I thought: my children should be the beneficiaries, so all proceeds go directly to them.

My experience with loss began at 26, when my best friend John unexpectedly died of a rare heart disease. It continued in my late 30s when my wife, only grandparent, father, mother, dear friend and 9-year old niece died. I was beyond lost - I was living in an abyss, trying my best to raise my girls, age 3 and 5, and be present for them.

I drew on my professional training in communications and began writing and painting as a means to explore my grief and work from the inside out onto a triangulated medium: the death, my experience into canvass or print. The work ranges from fits of rage to the comically absurd - after all a lot of what we experience in loss is bizarre.

As I dealt with my losses, I made a lot of mistakes, and at times spiraled into triggered grief, but I also found joy and resilience. I learned quickly that I had to face the losses head-on. As I did, I held onto one thing: that I had the ability to choose my attitude, and as such, I choose to revel in the sun, the light; in random acts of kindness and meeting negativity and hate with love.

ps: I’m deeply curious and love to learn. I created the NFTs so that I could teach myself about cryptocurrency. The work is absurd and geared to a younger audience. Funny enough, it was the first piece of art I sold. Go figure.