My Inspiration
My grandfather George communicated through his artwork. He sketched and painted his way through a war that ultimately took his life at a very young age. The small letters and drawings he sent home to his young wife and their three-year-old son became a catalyst, quiet, persistent proof that a life could be lived through making. Those pages of ink and wash held more than images; they held a voice, a presence, a legacy.
His son, Richard, grew up without a father. Yet George’s creative spirit lived on in him. Richard carried that inheritance not as a burden but as a seed. He cultivated a creative mind and an open, searching soul, and in turn he passed them on to his children. The lineage of art in our family is less about technique and more about transmission: the way an image can speak across absence, the way making can knit together generations.
When I pick up a brush or set a charcoal stick to paper, I think of George sketching in the margins of a letter, imagining his home from a distant ship. I think of Richard, my father, teaching me to see—how to find a drawing in the world’s light and shadow, how to trust that a small mark can carry meaning. My practice is a continuation of that conversation: an answer, a question, and an inheritance all at once.
Art for us has been a way to persist, to remember, and to communicate what words sometimes cannot. It is my grandfather’s voice and my father’s patience speaking through my hands. That is my inspiration.
