Credo

I believe that beauty is a universal and essential part of human existence. 
Beauty, at its root, is a manifestation, a conglomerate construct in our subconscious, of all we hold to be good, healthy, safe, friendly, comforting, exciting, moving, and wonderful. Add to these the life force in its most basic and most complex: the order and dynamics of the universe that spawned us and the fundamental forms and forces of creation of which we are a part, and which find expression in and through us. All these mold and actuate our perception of the beautiful. They are condensed in our nature into a mental template of positive excellence of which we are often only dimly aware: an innate ideal, which is part of the fiber of our being and the way we are "wired," and which is further refined through our own individual and unique web of experiences.

I believe that beauty is indispensable and necessary.
The human soul thirsts for beauty. It is through this aspiration that we find connection with and confirmation of those absolutes which beauty idealizes. Life devoid of beauty is impoverished and unfulfilled, for without it, we lose our link to our common, universal realities, and thus, our sense of well-being. The uplifting, the edifying, the beneficial, the satisfying and the reassuring are all aspects of beauty. Beauty is an archetype of that which optimizes life.
There are some artistic schools of thought that disparage beauty as irrelevant in the present world. Others who believe that creativity is an empty well, sucked dry by the genius of the past and that our only recourse is to reprocess and repackage the extant works of others. Many think that craftsmanship and skill are not only unnecessary, but detrimental to artistic expression. Still others believe that the explanation supersedes the creation, and that a work of art has no meaning without commentary and dissection. 
These ideas I reject.
Though much today puts on the guise of art: empty fashion, the merely provocative, the politically active, the pseudo-intellectual, the documentary and the vulgar, I find that works without the element of beauty possess no soul, no spirit and no positive essence.

I believe the function of art is to enrich, inspire and uplift the human spirit through excellence and beauty: it is to this end that I strive.