I am not a professional artist, nor do I have any inclination that I will be. My professional title is professor at a school of social work. I have experience treating populations with serious and persistent mental health issues and I research climate/environmental change impacts on mental health.My personal life is private online, but is lovely and complicated.

I did art as a kid, thought it was fun, but something to hide. I had a high school teacher that changed everything for me. Before, art felt clunky and something an “other” had the privilege of doing. After, art felt accessible and helped me to see the world in a different way. This teacher, Mr. Willis, very much influenced how I teach and why I love doing it. I have painted since high school, and my relationship to painting was still such a thrill. However, I still painted “secretly” (I put this in quotations because it wasn’t something I hid religiously, but… still, it was something I kept separate and compartmentalized.

Ok, so back to the original question: Why did I make this site? One reason is because it’s a decent way to document for myself what I have painted in the past 2 decades. The other reason is, a lot of things changed for me when I turned 40. From these changes, I learned that a gift in life is to engage in something called integration. If I can integrate painting into other aspects of my life, then life will be, in my mind, more worth living and beautiful. But also, again I don’t see myself as a professional painter, but man it would be cool to be in a gallery or begin to sell my art. This page seems like a step in that direction.

Lastly, I have also begun to merge painting with my professional life. To the left (or below if you’re on mobile) is a painting I did depicting my time researching climate change and farmer mental health. The process of making this painting literally helped me analyze my research data. It was amazing. I am writing about this process in a hopefully soon-to-be-published paper, so if you’re interested in how I did this you can wait for that or simply contact me via the thingy at the bottom of my page. Or you can go to my professional site (link) and find my work email there.