Bio:
I make art. Couldn’t stop if I wanted to. I graduated from Massachusetts College of Art in 1984. Soon after, I realized that if I were to make art my career it would suck all the joy out of the one thing I knew I could enjoy for life. So I’ve been a cab driver in Boston , and now a school bus driver in Olympia. Meanwhile, I’ve done commissioned portraits, book illustrations, murals and other freelance work here and there. I’ve developed both my representational and abstract techniques. I’ve been featured in the Russian art magazine Leaves and last year was interviewed by Poetry Without Borders, an organization working for international artistic exchange.
As a typical Gemini I guess, I paint both abstract and representationally. My abstract work is influenced by the Northwest artist Mark Tobey, who I think was unjustly overshadowed by Jackson Pollock just because of New York bias.
My representational work is influenced more by YouTube tutorials than any great artist. In particular, I like Alpay Efe and Michael James Smith . I’m a great fan of all the great illustrators, N.C. Wyeth, Gustave Doré, Arthur Rackham, and, yes, Norman Rockwell, who despite his name now being synonymous with the sickly sweet ideal family image, was a world class magazine illustrator. As for more historical art influences, I’ve always loved Albrecht Durer, the great German renaissance artist.
Artist Statement:
Washington, with its spectacular natural beauty, has a lot of hikers. When one hikes any trail here you will see this stump. Many times. Hiking up a mountain is so often used as a metaphor for life, pushing oneself to reach that summit view payoff. Using that metaphor, this painting says, ‘take time to enjoy all the little beauties on the way. The dead stump supporting all that life is an obvious ‘circle of life’ statement. The forest is full of them. Enjoying them is part of the state of mind that I so enjoy when hiking. It’s said that the subject of all landscape painting is mans relationship with God. A good walk in the forest is a way to bask in the amazing world that we are a part of.