I’ve always tried to keep my work as an artist separate from my job as a police officer. Being an artist feels like who I truly am, while being a cop often feels like just a job. But despite that effort, the experiences I’ve had as a New Orleans police officer inevitably seep into my artwork. Police work is emotional. It leaves marks. My art becomes a place to process those experiences—and often, to push back against them.
There’s a contradiction at the core of my life: law enforcement is strict, rule-bound, uniformed. Art is lawless, free, expressive. As a cop, I’m expected to follow orders and maintain order. As an artist, I explore chaos. That tension fuels my work. I’ve always pushed limits in both roles—and sometimes gotten into trouble in both. Maybe that’s part of a self-destructive tendency, or maybe it’s just the friction of living between two extremes.
My work often carries a dark edge. I’ve painted assault rifles, drug use, sex, murder scenes, and suicides—not out of sensationalism, but as a reflection of what I witness daily. Though I’m generally upbeat in person, the violence, death, and victimization I encounter leave a shadow that’s visible on the canvas. I’m not trying to comfort viewers. I want them to feel unsettled, to confront the deeper sociological issues behind the images. I want them to pause and think.
Graffiti has also influenced my aesthetic—especially its bold graphic quality, color use, and refusal to follow rules. While I don’t intentionally mimic graffiti, I embrace its rebellious, non-conforming spirit. Like graffiti, my work often uses spray paint, silkscreen, and mixed media, including documents, paste, acrylic, charcoal, and house paint. I layer paintings on top of each other, sometimes sanding or tearing through the surface to reveal what came before. I like the idea that the viewer becomes part of the piece—another layer added just by looking.
Ghost Ship, the title of my newest series, refers to the haunting legacy of old-school policing—specifically, the specter of the New Orleans Police Department’s past. When I began the work, the department was emerging from a long history of corruption, approaching the final phase of its Federal Consent Decree. These paintings reflect a city and a department in transition, steering a massive institutional ship back on course. The recurring image of a 1986 Dodge Diplomat—an iconic police cruiser—evokes both the nostalgia and burden of that past. Like a ship, the car is both transport and shelter. For a cop, it becomes a place you live and work, a space of both safety and power.
While creating this series, I was actively working robbery cases in the First District. Painting became a way to mentally work through those investigations—layering thoughts and evidence, hypothesizing new angles. I even embedded documents from real cases into the canvases, then painted or sanded over them, leaving some visible and some hidden. What began as reflection became catharsis.
Another recurring symbol in the work is the ski mask. It’s emblematic of violent robbery—of anonymity and threat. But more recently, it’s taken on a deeper, more political weight. The mask now also conjures images of unmarked agents, of ICE raids, of people being taken, detained, and deported without due process. In that way, the Ghost Ship becomes not just a metaphor for institutional legacy—but a warning of present-day injustice still drifting through the city, cloaked and unaccountable.
This body of work sits at the intersection of personal history, public service, and social critique. It’s a reflection of conflict, containment, and the need for expression beyond the badge.
There’s a contradiction at the core of my life: law enforcement is strict, rule-bound, uniformed. Art is lawless, free, expressive. As a cop, I’m expected to follow orders and maintain order. As an artist, I explore chaos. That tension fuels my work. I’ve always pushed limits in both roles—and sometimes gotten into trouble in both. Maybe that’s part of a self-destructive tendency, or maybe it’s just the friction of living between two extremes.
My work often carries a dark edge. I’ve painted assault rifles, drug use, sex, murder scenes, and suicides—not out of sensationalism, but as a reflection of what I witness daily. Though I’m generally upbeat in person, the violence, death, and victimization I encounter leave a shadow that’s visible on the canvas. I’m not trying to comfort viewers. I want them to feel unsettled, to confront the deeper sociological issues behind the images. I want them to pause and think.
Graffiti has also influenced my aesthetic—especially its bold graphic quality, color use, and refusal to follow rules. While I don’t intentionally mimic graffiti, I embrace its rebellious, non-conforming spirit. Like graffiti, my work often uses spray paint, silkscreen, and mixed media, including documents, paste, acrylic, charcoal, and house paint. I layer paintings on top of each other, sometimes sanding or tearing through the surface to reveal what came before. I like the idea that the viewer becomes part of the piece—another layer added just by looking.
Ghost Ship, the title of my newest series, refers to the haunting legacy of old-school policing—specifically, the specter of the New Orleans Police Department’s past. When I began the work, the department was emerging from a long history of corruption, approaching the final phase of its Federal Consent Decree. These paintings reflect a city and a department in transition, steering a massive institutional ship back on course. The recurring image of a 1986 Dodge Diplomat—an iconic police cruiser—evokes both the nostalgia and burden of that past. Like a ship, the car is both transport and shelter. For a cop, it becomes a place you live and work, a space of both safety and power.
While creating this series, I was actively working robbery cases in the First District. Painting became a way to mentally work through those investigations—layering thoughts and evidence, hypothesizing new angles. I even embedded documents from real cases into the canvases, then painted or sanded over them, leaving some visible and some hidden. What began as reflection became catharsis.
Another recurring symbol in the work is the ski mask. It’s emblematic of violent robbery—of anonymity and threat. But more recently, it’s taken on a deeper, more political weight. The mask now also conjures images of unmarked agents, of ICE raids, of people being taken, detained, and deported without due process. In that way, the Ghost Ship becomes not just a metaphor for institutional legacy—but a warning of present-day injustice still drifting through the city, cloaked and unaccountable.
This body of work sits at the intersection of personal history, public service, and social critique. It’s a reflection of conflict, containment, and the need for expression beyond the badge.