What are some of your hobbies and how do they relate to your art making?

Making art is hard. I have several hobbies and I think they all help me in some way with my art making. I'm a fan of most sports, but especially basketball and football. In both of these sports  there are moments of  defeat, grace, power, invention, and perfection. I'm also an avid skateboarder,  and all of these qualities can be found in skateboarding as well, especially the trait of persistence and self reliance. All of these sports and painting share the special moments where everything at some point hangs in the balance.
While in the studio I love listening to audio books while my dog sleeps. A great book and contented canine create the ideal studio setting! 
Walking the dog with my wife, discussing life and art at the same time is a great way to get a new take on what I'm doing in the studio. It's a good balance to have someone who shares my view with how important art can be, while the animal at the end of leash doesn't care at all.
Movies, TV shows , reading, and looking at art also serve as ways for me to generate ideas for paintings. We all love a great story told well, don't we? 

What do you do when your well is dry, when you can no longer hear your Muse?
Thankfully this has only happened once when I was in college, and looking at art and continuing to make work, worked! After that I made landscapes for years and eventually moved to painting figures in environments. I know when I stopped painting landscapes I still had at least five years of landscape paintings that I could do. At present I feel backlogged and have several years of figurative paintings that need my attention. I also try to buttress my life against losing the muse by building in time for new experiences that keep me fresh, as well as assigning myself studio time hoping that I could work through any dry spells. Our current situation with Covid-19 and the state of the nation at times has sucked some of the wind from my sails, but the spark of creativity happening in the studio, and the painting on the easel, and the work ahead saves me.

Do you have any important moments that have defined you as an artist?

I was in college my senior year and making  bad surrealist paintings. I went to the Art Institute of Chicago and looked at the Impressionist paintings in their collection. A few weeks earlier I saw the movie "Dreams" by Akira Kurosawa.  In one of the segments Van Gogh is asked why he paints and he responds emphatically, "Because of the Sun!" At the time I thought this answer was bizarre. After seeing so many landscapes at the Art Institute  my friends and I decided to go out painting on a chilly cloudy day in March. Things weren't going well, we were cold, and I was ill prepared to be painting outdoors. Then all of a sudden the sun came out from behind the clouds and illuminated the frozen Wisconsin cornfields. Instantly I knew what Van Gogh meant! 

At that moment I knew I needed to paint the rest of my life.