A little bit about me:

I spent my entire career as a graphic designer, working both independently and at several well-known Silicon Valley advertising agencies and design studios. Along the way, I won numerous design awards, and my client list included companies such as HP, NEC, Xerox, Simon & Schuster, and InfoWorld. I was a fine art major at San Jose State for a year before transferring
to the graphic design department, where I studied under Sam Smidt and earned a B.S. degree
in graphic design. 

 

Fine art always has been my true passion. I have been painting and drawing as far back as I can remember and actually recall the moment in first grade, while doing a pen-and-ink rendering of a fellow student, that I began looking at the world differently and thinking of myself as an artist. Another watershed moment occurred at age 12, when I took my first oil painting class and found the medium that most engages me to this day. Along the way, I sold paintings to friends and acquaintances and participated in a couple of small shows, but it wasn’t until I was able to quit my job in Silicon Valley and move to Santa Rosa in 2014 that I could focus on my artwork and pursue a fine art career. 

 

As you can see from the paintings and drawings represented on my website, however, earning
a living as a graphic artist never stopped me from producing artwork, and the work online represents only the pieces of which I happen to have a digital record. Every painting and drawing on the website except the eight paintings on the “New Art” page were lost in the Tubbs Fire last October 9th, 2017, roughly 50 pieces in all.

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A little bit about the work:

As you can see, over the last 30 years, my work has progressed through several arcs, from abstract art to representational art to the Monument series that, in my view, brings the two realms together. In the abstract series, I started to develop a visual vocabulary that has carried through to the Monument series and now the New Art/Post Fire series. To me, these elements represent the delicate balance between chaos and order, organic and inorganic, unfolding and growth versus destruction and oblivion. And finally, rebirth. In the process, the elemental structures of physical reality are laid bare. 

 

After the fire, either as a form of catharsis or simply a journalistic impulse, I felt the need to produce a series of representational canvases illustrating the destruction caused by the catastrophic event that transformed so many lives. For me, these paintings represent the next artistic phase: my own personal rebirth after losing a lifelong body of work.