I paid for college by bodypainting and hennaing in the summers. Not the full bodypaintings that you would find in these galleries, but those summers were the inception of these works. At that time I was working from noon to midnight on the boardwalk of Ocean City, Maryland, while living illegally in my car.

   I sat on a public park bench by 1st street with a hatbox full of paints and charged a 3 dollar donation for anything anywhere no questions. At that time I had no pictures of what I could do and took no pictures of what I did. I enjoyed the temporal nature of the beauty. I somewhat regret that now.

    About 40% of my customers were children, who wanted Elmo, Blue Clues and Teenage Mutant Turtles. Adults made up rest and their requests were much more varied. Since I had no pictures of past work, they couldn't just pick something and say, "That's pretty do that." So with each adult I was able to say, "What do you REALLY want? If you can dream it I can paint it. I believe everyone has a picture inside them that represents them"

    Forcing people to search their souls for a visual image while on vacation, really turned some people off; but many others rose to the occasion. I got to paint pictures of angels, irises and cable stay bridges along with the more traditional ying-yangs, dolphins, roses and barbed wire.

    Some people took photos of the paintings and brought them to their tattoo artist at home, and came back next summer to show me my work done permanently. The three dollar suggested donation I charged per painting proved to be meaningless, I ended up paying for college with the tips. Having individual designs that they came up with was worth much more to people then just picking some flash art off a wall. I spent alot of time perfecting my celtic weave by painting on myself and thinking how wonderful it would be to do a full bodypainting