About the artist
Call me Al!
I'm a fluffy-haired, Eastern Washington-based visual artist with experience and interest ranging from multimedia painting and drawing to illustration, design, education, and installation work. I'm currently resident artist at Cafe con Arte, a combination gallery and coffee shop in Pasco, Washington.
Fundamentally, I believe that all art is play: when we create, we use concepts and materials to communicate our daydreams out loud. It's my mission as an artist to keep my feet as firmly on the ground as my head is freely floating in the clouds!
Self-portraits
What"s the artwork about?
color and texture of raw wood, glass, and canvas
transitory spaces in both our inner and outer worlds
the reflection and refraction of light
workaday beauty in ordinary objects and events
play, play, play!
zooming into the little
sensory experiences we
tune out in our daily lives
allowing full-scale works to retain the easy, unpolished confidence of a sketchbook page
creating space for interpretation through simple subjects
ensuring every layer is seen, showing how I carve new images from old ones
simple, bright, playful colors given depth through texture
uncertainty in self-concept
simple, childlike perspective on the sensory world
Why teach?
Four years of experience in education and childcare made it clear to me that the way we teach art is all wrong.
As kids, we were given coloring sheets, walked through craft projects step-by-step, and taught art history through stories of a few Old Greats who were either commissioned to paint chapels or ignored during their time and died without recognition. Then we grew into adults who don't "understand" art, can't believe that art is worth doing beyond profit, and who don't believe themselves to be fundamentally creative people. We've even forgotten how to play!
Art has a different definition and serves a different purpose for everyone. My job as an instructor is to coax you into discovering what art is to you. I facilitate play; I provide materials, create a space for play, teach you a few tricks for playing, then turn you loose. Play is our brains' favorite way of learning. Nothing in the world can substitute experience!
Art vs Artist
Self-portraits
Al's Story
When I graduated high school as a young, inexperienced artist, I had fresh and stinging creative wounds inflicted on me from all different areas of my life. I received a scholarship to the Pacific Northwest College of Art, but I couldn't afford to attend, and no adult in my life supported my dream of pursuing art at all. Instead, I was encouraged to be "sensible" with my choices. I started studying to be a schoolteacher... until the COVID pandemic shut down everything, and I was back in waiting mode. I became severely blocked. I shelved my identity as an artist.
Blockages are a natural part of the ebb and flow of creative life, but it's difficult for most to overcome them (or even recognize them!) without guidance from a present facilitator, mentor, or teacher. I had no creative support system, so even though I was an educator, it took me years of trial and error to learn how to be an artist again. Now, as a working artist, I have the privilege to speak about art with all sorts of people, and the glaring truth is that many of them are just like I was: blocked and stuck. That's probably why I'm so passionate about being an educator myself.
Creativity requires play, play requires irreverence, and irreverence requires both safety and confidence. My mission now is to support established and soon-to-be artists alike in their pursuit of safety, confidence, irreverence, and play.