I attended the University of Louisville, majoring in Studio Art/Drawing, yet I consider myself self-taught. I have done mostly celebrity portraits, and now work in portrait painting and figure drawing. I work primarily with pencil/graphite and acrylic, on occasion with colored pencil and pastels, and am exploring mixed media. I’ve been influenced by portrait photography, particularly classic Hollywood, and musician or fashion photographers such as Annie Leibovits, Steve Parke, George Edward Hurrell, Clarence Sinclair Bull, Milton H. Greene and Gordon Parks. My goal is to create painterly-style photorealistic paintings. This means they look like the photograph while not pretending to be a photograph. They are rendered proudly in a particular painting style. I also do portrait drawings using the same artistic approach.