“My work draws from history and familiarity, a sense of time and place, from important people in my life and a deep appreciation of nature. I tend to work in series of paintings or sculptures as I go from point to point. Each piece informs the next and creates a personal narrative of events that I encounter as an artist and observer, husband, son and friend.”

Calkins works with a large variety of media, from working with fabric, wood and metal to encaustics to bookmaking — keeping my sense of discovery fresh and exciting, often leaning on sketches from my notebooks that have captured important and not so important events in his life.

He began exhibiting in 1994 at the MIA Gallery in Seattle, and is currently represented by the American Primitive Gallery in New York, Rice Polak in Provincetown, MA and Tanner Hill in Chattanooga, TN; he has worked as art instructor since 2005.