Artist Profile

I am an Artist living in the Northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan. The obsessions & compulsions of my art making are tied to the natural world around me in this and other locales I visit.

Lake Michigan is about 500 yards in front of our home - I see it everyday. I grew up summering on the lakes of Northern Michigan. In my early twenties I served in the Navy, piloting an ammunition ship across the Atlantic and through the Mediterranean Sea. I traveled to sites I had only read about in National Geographic or studied in Art History classes. I guess you could call me a truly "Michigan Artist" - having all of my formal college training here at quality schools, and at least three branches of my family have lived continuously in Michigan before it was made a state.

The horizon line of a lake or land feature is one element that has been persistent for the last few years, and I see the thread of that feature in my past works. This obsession with line and drawing with the liquid paint in gravity has been around for over 30 years with me.

The aforementioned horizon line simply stated has been evolving and flowing to trees, fractally descriptive drips, and other focal colors. Bright yellows & reds of the day and sunsets, the shifting reds of the underneath of clouds, the green line of a shoreline...all float with the blues of the skies & water in my studio.

My influences and heroes in painting are diverse. The focal home of my inclinations would be the Abstract Expressionists of the 1950's, although I draw ideas from diverse sources in Art, History, Science, and Philosophy.