I grew up mostly in the Pacific Northwest, moving to Arlington Texas as a teenager. In 1998 my wife & I moved to the City of Socorro, New Mexico from the Pacific Northwest where we built an adobe home above the Rio Grande valley at the base of one of New Mexico’s many mountains.
Artist Statement
I have been a watercolor artist since I was a teenager; I use a combination of transparent watercolors and dry brush. I learned oil painting from master painting restorationist & artist Bill Yelland in Tustin, CA, who trained me in techniques used by the old masters whose paintings he was restoring. I start with a monochrome under painting which I then overlay with layers of transparent. In most of my paintings, I use a limited color palette.
My special love, however, is reserved for pen and ink drawings. The starkness of the black marks on white paper and the endless possibilities to draw texture fascinates me. Occasionally I also create pastels, pencil, calligraphy, colored pencils, and wood carving. I study and research a lot – ancient art, cave art, modern art, impressionism, and more. Since I have a background in design I appreciate art deco, art noveau, craftsman and mission style.
Art and the artist are both better when they are forced to live up to something greater than themselves. Art at best is a pale reflection of things greater and beyond me. There are universal truths to be found in the complexities of the smallest creatures. A wind scorpion is the master of its world, and yet will die with the 1st frost in the fall. When I was young, I found tall trees in fields of grass. I have been to the ocean and been swept off my feet. I have been to the top of mountains where the air is cold and thin; looked across the top of the world and realized how inconsequential I am. There are diamonds in snowflakes, rarer than the rarest diamond. They last a brief moment and disappear before our breath. There are harmonic patterns in wind-rippled water, in blown sand, & in cirrus clouds arriving before a storm. The patterns in a rattlesnake’s scales are much the same as in the center of a sunflower.
