“Art has always been in my family. Back in the late 80s, my mom started Carlyn Gallery with her partner as a fine art gallery with paintings, high-end jewelry, sculptures, all sorts of things like that. My aunt and uncle were both career artists. My grandfather was a chemist, but he was also a very good oil painter as well.

I was the ‘kid with a camera’, going on vacation and snapping a picture out the car window of the mountains. I was an art major at Hope, did another year studying photography at Grand Valley, and then I started working for a photographer in Muskegon doing portraits.

For me, art is about expression and the process of making it, and it’s also another recreational aspect of my life. My dad was into windsurfing and he taught me, so I grew up wind surfing in Lake Michigan since I was like a kid back in the 80s. So I started heavily shooting the lake in 2016, and going out there with a water housing on my camera is almost on par with getting to go out and go surfing or kite surfing.”