Lately, I’ve been thinking about how nature recycles everything and how nothing goes to waste. Just look at Primorial, the above image of a wetland. All of those leaves will fall, act as a filter, and improve the water quality. The leaves will supply nutrients for the next season of life. In millions of years, the wetland will produce crude oil and under pressure, if the conditions are right, a diamond.

This principle of “nothing going to waste” is a useful, if not entirely true, thought to apply to our lives.

Even the experiences we think have taken us in the wrong direction, may be applied in a new context.

In 2022, I stopped practicing law to follow my lifelong interest in art and natural history. But the skills and way of thinking that I learned in that profession have, much to my surprise, translated over to my studio practice.

In law, you must be thorough, detailed, precise, and accurate. To be a lawyer, any kind of lawyer, you must sit through the most tedious and boring classes you can ever imagine.

You know those disclaimers at the end of pharmaceutical ads on television? Law school classes are like those disclaimers, only in slow motion.

The grit one develops in law school is a great recipe for success in any field, even art.

There is no barrier to entry to calling yourself an artist. In other words, it is a crowded field. Of course, anyone can slop paint on a canvas in an hour, sign it, and call it art.

However, if you have grit, you can diligently and slowly build up layers or incremental segments of a whole composition to develop a work of art you can truly be proud to call your own. It is this grit and patience that I have developed along with the practice in a truly remarkable and rare medium and process that makes my artwork one-of-a-kind.