My love for faux painting started in theater, where you learn quickly that a flat piece of plywood can become marble, aged stone, or richly grained wood — all with a brush and the right technique. That world of illusion lit something up in me that never went out.

Two techniques stole my heart early on: marbling and faux bois. There’s something meditative about pulling a feather through wet glaze to chase a vein of marble, or coaxing the figure of oak grain from a comb dragged through paint. It’s part craft, part performance — which makes sense given where I learned it.

These days, that stagecraft has found a very different home. I work on historic buildings, touching up and reconstructing original decorative finishes — matching what craftsmen laid down generations ago, sometimes working from nothing more than a small surviving patch as a guide. It’s detective work as much as painting.

Every restored finish is a quiet conversation between past and present. I’m not the artist here — I’m just keeping the story going.