(jar lid popping) - All right.

I've always known that I was a creative- That's perfect, perfect, perfect.

I started painting by, I don't want to say accident, but it was a desire to actually have art on my walls in the previous place that I lived in.

It had just big, blank white walls.

And I'm like, you know what?

I want art on my walls.

(bristles scuffing broadly) And I want large art.

I want to actually fill my space up with art.

There we go.

Ahhh, fresh.

It was in a moment where it's like, you know what?

I'm a creative person.

I could just make something myself.

(mellow music) The type of art that I make, I would classify it as abstract expressionism.

So it's objects that you can depict to some extent but still you have the ability to, sort of craft your own narrative to a degree or pin your own sort of feeling to it, still.

The more abstract you make a thing, with intention as well, I believe it gives the ability to have others go deeper.

And you can pull a wide array of meaning from an abstract piece.

You give people the opportunity to feel as they desire to feel, or pull from it as they desire to pull from it.

(gentle percussive music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music concludes) I am working on a story.

(palette knife scraping) The story of when the sea was parted and Moses led the Israelites out of Pharaoh's captivity and they were washed away by the waters as they were granted access to pass through.

And so that's what the image is.

And you have the big godlike angel character in the middle as the thing that's separating and holding the waters apart for his people to come through.

A lot of my earliest works were biblically based.

I was thinking at that point in time too, of how can I create something that can be authentically mine, that is identifiable, as well as be something that challenges people's thoughts?

(soft enigmatic music) (enigmatic music continues) I just painted these two characters without them even interacting with each other, just like, just face on.

They're just like angel character and a demon character.

However, when we typically think of angelic beings or demonic beings, the angelic character is typically a lighter color and the demonic character is usually a darker color.

I decided to flip that on its head.

Even that simple swap is enough to get people to think, "Well, why did he do that?"

You know?

Or it could challenge your own biases as well.

Some people when they see it, initially pin it to race and you have to think, "Well, why did I do that?"

You know?

It's rooted in something that really doesn't matter, you know?

They're colors at the end of the day and it's like, why are they that way?

You know, who said they had to be that way?

And so good could look like all sorts of shades and things.

So it's just like, it could be, they could be green and purple, they could be whatever.

And so I felt that was enough to run with as well.

And like, how I create them, like kind of this playful nature that I make them in, I can tell recurring stories with these characters.

(soft enigmatic music) What matters to me most in life and what I do my best to convey through my art is the feeling of love.

(mellow percussive music) Love truly is the answer to quite literally all of the problems that we have as humans.

And it is the core feeling that we all seek in all that we are doing.

And so that's what I do my best to convey in my art.

- [Announcer] Thanks for watching "The Arts Page."

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