Biography

Background

I have always dreamed of being an artist...a painter.

This journey or aspiration began in elementary school when I got a really BIG box of color crayons for school.

I was born in Denver, Colorado and grew up in the suburbs of The Mile High city near the foothills of the Rocky Mountains near Boulder.

The indigenous history of the Denver region and Colorado more broadly is with the Southern Ute Indian Tribe and Ute Mountain Tribe who are the first people,first nation. I acknowledge that the land that I have occupied is and remains originally native ancestral land.

Both sets of my grandparents homesteaded 160 acre dry-land ranches, one in Wyoming & the other in Oklahoma. Second generation immigrants from eastern & western Europe, they participated in the colonizing of America at the expense of the indigenous cultures. 

My folks were third generation Americans, they were solid, sturdy, hardworking ranch stock, who wanted something more than the rural farm life for themselves and moved to cities.

Engaging With Art

My parents enrolled me in private & group oil painting lessons with a local artist, Ruth Turner when I was eleven years old.

I attended public elementary, middle & senior high school.  The art department and the art studio has always been a refuge. I was mentored in high school for four years by Warren Lundquist my public school art teacher.

Attended Fort Lewis College in Durango, CO as a FA major on work/study scholarship and studied with Mick Reber, Gerald Wells and Stanton Englehart.

After college I enrolled in the FA arts program at Rocky Mountain College of Art & Design in Denver, CO founded by Philip Steele.  Studied with Shannon Kegan, James Valone and Phil Steele. I met my best friend and future wife there. We were fortunate to also become parents.

I have maintained a studio practice for a number of years and have lived in Washington State for years.

Artists who have influenced me

Michelangelo, Rembrandt, El Greco, Raphael, Chaim Soutine, Paul Cezanne, Arshile Gorky, Agnes Martin, Joan Mitchell, Georgia OKeefe, Mark Rothko, Willem De Kooning, Lee Krasner, Brian Rutenburg, Frank Auerbach, Kerry James Marshall, Gerhard Richter, Jacob Lawrence, Alice Neal,  Jean-Michel Basquiat, Pat Passlof, Howard Hodkins, Cecily Brown & Woody Dennis.

Career Highlights

  • Group exhibitions: 13

  • Solo exhibitions: 6

  • Have taught/instructed fine art and commercial design courses as an adjunct faculty instructor for both adults and children in oil painting, life drawing, basic & advanced color theory, linear perspective, rendering and art history.

A dream takes dedication and a lifetime.