Teaching is a dynamic endeavor.

I encourage individuals to be balanced and fully engaged people, their aesthetic pursuit inseparable from their lives.  Everything they know, experience and believe comes into play. I come to my students filled with an expectation and belief that everyone is capable of finding an aesthetic path benefiting the individual and the culture.
We develop visual language, which reflects as much of the whole person as is possible today.  This balance and breadth gives individuals a sense of fullness.  We accomplish this by suggesting that aesthetics are not sequestered within museum walls, or academic settings, but rather exists in every aspect of our daily lives.   These students become more sensitive to their surroundings, but it doesn’t stop there.  We insist on an effort to discern the lesson, we insist that meaning and wisdom can be discovered.  We are artists with a cultural responsibility to comment upon our times.

 We discuss the role of an artist in culture further, and attempt to develop their place in the long tradition of art making.  I help them fall in love with the working process, provide them with an ever-expanding language affording them access to their content.  I help them broaden their capacity through genre’ diversity, technical skill development, formal relationships, and historical precedent.   These individuals come to see themselves as artists, not students.

Currency in the classroom requires an inextricable link to my studio production. The involvement, the work, the focus, the experiments, echo in my discussions with students. I believe they sense my enthusiasm and interest in the topic, I know this encourages them and challenges them to further pursue their aesthetic.   I see my students make progress in these terms.  They are better draftsmen, better colorists, and come to use formal issues as a powerful tool. My students are constantly reminded to check on the conceptual ramifications of their technical and formal decisions.  Most importantly, my best students become more tolerant, and more engaged in their education ready to contribute to their world.