"Around here, however, we don’t look backwards for very long. We keep moving forward, opening up new doors and doing new things… and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths." - Walt Disney
If you've had the joy of watching 'Meet the Robinsons,' (Disney, 2007) you'll see where I came upon this quote. Filled with quirky characters (robots!), goofy humor, and an overarching theme of resilience, the movie it just fun to watch and our kids love it too. It serves as a delightful reminder to embrace life's quirks, laugh at the goofy moments, learn from the past, and above all, keep moving forward. Drawing inspiration from this fun-filled flick, I've embraced it as the guiding theme for my 2024 journey.
As the year unfolds, my website is undergoing a transformation to better reflect my creative endeavors. In the coming months, anticipate the debut of my own hand made, original artwork and designs available for purchase. I have new art challenges brewing, new digital creations and so much more in the pipeline. And fear not, for the cherished antique sacred art line will continue to grace the collection.
Having dedicated a significant portion of my career to graphic design, collaborating on remarkable projects with outstanding companies and individuals, I'm thrilled to announce my return to full-time creative pursuits. I gained my love of typography from graphic design. Do you need some help with some design work? Then let's talk! You can check out my graphic design portfolio over here.
What fuels my creative process? It's my unwavering Catholic faith, a force that is central to my life and art. Sometimes, this means delving into religious symbolism with my art, and at other times, it's about creating art simply for the sake of its inherent beauty. I'll admit that I've been limiting myself by thinking that everything I made had to be overtly Catholic in some way. Time in adoration, prayer and readings set me straight on this thinking. For other artists, this may be their calling, but that is not what He made me to do. John Paul II's Letter to Artists helped me with this point.
"The theme of beauty is decisive for a discourse on art. It was already present when I stressed God's delighted gaze upon creation. In perceiving that all he had created was good, God saw that it was beautiful as well.(4) The link between good and beautiful stirs fruitful reflection. In a certain sense, beauty is the visible form of the good, just as the good is the metaphysical condition of beauty. This was well understood by the Greeks who, by fusing the two concepts, coined a term which embraces both: kalokagathía, or beauty-goodness. On this point Plato writes: “The power of the Good has taken refuge in the nature of the Beautiful”.(5)
It is in living and acting that man establishes his relationship with being, with the truth and with the good. The artist has a special relationship to beauty. In a very true sense it can be said that beauty is the vocation bestowed on him by the Creator in the gift of “artistic talent”. And, certainly, this too is a talent which ought to be made to bear fruit, in keeping with the sense of the Gospel parable of the talents (cf. Mt 25:14-30)."
Well, I managed to work Walt Disney and St. John Paul II quotes into one blog post! Not to shabby for the new year.