There is no one-way to define the purpose of art or the motive of the artist. It is my understanding that art needs to be shared. The creative process is brought full-circle when we allow others to share in our creative works. Reception is a double-edged sword, though. Sharing invites vulnerability and criticism. It invites misunderstanding and ridicule. Undoubtedly, it invokes comparison. Offense is given to any artist whose work is only understood by its relationship to something the viewer understands or can equate to a form of usefulness.

This form of profane criticism smacks hardest upon those who work in a semi-realist style. As artists, we take a zero-term and we elaborate upon it-even if the end result is a painting, photograph, sculpture, gesture, or tune that the viewer can claim to understand or recognize-the artist has brought a new dimension to a familiar object. It is precisely this new narrative that needs to be understood-contemplated, before the viewer can assess a given work.

The artist relies heavily upon the cultural astuteness of their audience. The artist assumes that their audience embodies the necessary literal and figurative sensibilities to grasp an artistic piece in its subtle, and perhaps not so subtle, departures. If this mutual vision is absent, the artistic understanding cannot be reached and the circle between the artist and the audience remains open, straining both parties to the point of frustration. The frustration of the artist lies in a piece that lacks reception and few audiences will remain with what they cannot understand within seven seconds or which fails to entertain or engage them as they wish to be. I'll admit that there are artists whose sole purpose is to alienate audiences, but that, too, is a form of artistic exploration, which depends largely on the keen observer who senses this kernel of artistic solipsism enough to be seduced further.

Art is born in what we would call our real world. Creativity has its existence in the things we know. But when we are forced to see the commonplace in a different light, we object when it is not presented in a way that we can endorse. The pervasive opinion regarding art is that when the creative process attacks our personal complacency then art has lost its significance. The audience must be willing to admit that art has evolved beyond the position it once occupied centuries ago: aesthetic. In addition to aesthetics, art is also a compelling polymorphous entity that demands that we engage the concepts that the artist directs us towards, instead of just refusing to view that which we do not wish to see. Closing our senses will not stop the potency of art. Art can, and will, raise the issues we would rather not address. Art will bring the concerns of the indigent before the wealthy. Art will bring the promiscuous before the chase, the immoral before the moral, the female before the male, and the black before the white. Art will provoke us to a new sensibility about the world we live in and it shall have a voice.

Using the medium of photography and the world as I find it, I seek to expand vision. My approach to art is conceptual narrative-pulling or making a story out of the everyday. My art is designed to edify by enticing the viewer to consider an alternate take on the familiar. I am not creating any images that haven't been made before by some other artist in another time or medium; however I am making these images because I must, sharing them with those within the sphere of influence I have been entrusted. In this sphere, the old finds a new audience. Old forms combined with new technology keeps the peculiar practice of artistic creation running at its peak. I have finally accepted that art is where the artist finds it and the more I look, the more I am overwhelmed by the images that are so quickly discarded each moment of my life. Try as I a might, I will not capture them all, but hopefully the ones I do catch will be worthy of consideration for as long as they exist in the minds of those who view them.