My early sketchbooks were filled with cartoons and humorous observations, but gradually I became more interested in drawings that were less overtly humorous and more marked by intuition, spontineity and a vocabulary of marks, textures and symbols. A variety of influences such as, Southwest rock petroglyphs, self-taught artists of the deep south and automatic drawing started to appear in my work. I began to do paintings based on the new sketchbook drawings as a kind of counterpoint to my illustration work. I started using pigments and color combinations that I ordinarily would not use, and different drawing tools, resulting in a general loosening of the parameters that were in my commercial work. Please click on Paintings to view original watercorlors and Prints to view available Iris Prints.