Most people have a place where they can go to just to let go of their feelings or where they can feel safe, a place where they can be by themselves and do anything they feel like doing. When I want to express my feelings, I go into abandoned houses and either paint or take photos of the things I see.

When you walk into abandoned houses, the aroma of wildflowers and mildew lingers around you like a soft breeze on a warm summer day. The wallpaper and old furniture is permeated with a strong musky smell like an antique. As you walk through the many rooms and doorways, you see scratched up walls and torn down structures. The stories and the memories that these walls hold could fill a book with many chapters. Everywhere you look among the rubble are treasures left behind.

What was once a home, warm and inviting for families and friends is now a highway for transient and random travelers who are curious about its contents left behind. The exterior that was once well manicured and enjoyed by the occupants inside is now overtaken and becomes part of the surrounding vegetation like a branch, no longer cared for or loved by anyone. Now this house takes on a personality of an elderly person who has been left in the nursing home to wait for their time to expire.

The eerie sounds of quiet somehow scream for attention as they once had. All you can hear is the sound of a quiet breeze singing and whistling through cracks and breaks amongst the house. A place that was once full of laughs, cries, conversations, screams, and tears is now left behind with only moans and creaks.

As you keep traveling through the house, you have to be careful where you walk because the broken glass and sharp edges could cut you like a knife. The countertops and the cabinets feel like a piece of driftwood that has been tattered by the raging years. When you walk around anywhere the crackle of broken toys and unstable flooring feels like you?re walking on shattered glass.

The fragile remains of these abandoned houses remind us of how fragile our lives are in the present. The many shattered and broken remains of the houses are filled with various memories like a collage displays pages in a scrapbook. Though these houses are rejected and stripped from all human presence their souls hang onto the past, slowly giving way to the evils of time. The worn and tattered interior and exteriors of these homes allow me to call theses places special, because they bring my art to life.