I am a self-taught, visionary surrealist painter (for lack of a better definition). I believe that reality is a cultural consensus, that people perceive the world through the "lens" of their society. This conditioned perception of reality along with the tendency to grow less observant of the world around us as we become adults, dulls our awareness. Our concept of an object profoundly affects the way we see it. Often, we are seeing our concept of the object more than we are actually looking at the object itself. When someone is unfamiliar wih something, they examine it more carefully than they do when they have a preconceived notion of what it is. I like to take images that seem familiar and render them unfamiliar, allowing the viewer to see them as if for the first time. I agree with Magritte that an artist's work should "evoke a sense of mystery" and feel that the best advice ever given to an artist was director Sergei Diaghilev's command to Jean Cocteau "Astonish Me"
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