I don’t often want to talk about my art. I love that people appreciate it and buy it. I love it myself or I wouldn’t be showing it to anyone.

But I think that talking about the work I am currently working on doesn’t help it get made. I think it can hinder it. So I don’t do it that often. I guess that is part superstition and part reality. I don’t want to jinx a good thing and also I don’t want to take the wind out of my sails by analyzing.

These images are specifically created for a book, LYONS MEN volume 4, that I am working on these days. They are a mix of my drawings, photographs I have taken, and digital graphics I created.

These images all have specific meaning to me, but I am less interested in expressing my personal meaning than their impact and energy.

One piece in here is (to me) an homage to my friend who died and how I see his struggles from the perspective of my age now, but you don’t have that experience. I can’t expect anyone to feel these things with me. But I bet you can feel the emotion, the intensity, even if the message doesn’t clearly convey.

We can co-experience the sense of loss or longing or even joy. And I think that ability to sense all that brings us together in a way - we can appreciate that we are not alone in how we feel these things. It’s the source of empathy.

And now, when everything feels. so threatening and dividing, and empathy is looked at by some as a weakness, that connection is important to feel and acknowledge. It helps us bring community, which I keep hearing is the antidote to this particular brand of hate that’s making the news these days.