Visual Food For Thought

I think we are influenced by everything we see, whether we are conscious of it or not. But as far as people who I am consciously influenced by I would say Jasper Johns had a major impact on me, perhaps because when I first saw his work up close and personal at the Whitney back in the late 80's it made me realize that found objects were an exciting and acceptable part of creating art. That's when I took a course at Santa Barbara City College with another artist I admired Ron Robertson, http://www.robertson-art.com, who taught me his techniques of transforming found objects to art. I hadn't done anything for quite a while when I started doing these boxes again a few years back, but it was then that I realized it was part of who I am. Painting with objects is a language I speak.