ART BOY IN THE WILDERNESS

Welcome to my website and gallery. I have been around for a long time, just not well known as a painter. I guess you could say that I am an emerging artist of age.

Most of my adult life I have been a photographer and worked in various theaters and universities as a scenic designer, occasional costumer, lighting designer and director. I have always dabbled in painting but not until I moved to my current home (with a large studio space) have I gotten more serious. I have always liked to work large and finally I have enough space to do just that.

My father was an incredible artist and sign-maker, also highly unknown. I always wanted to do what he did, only more successfully. I sort of accomplished that. I don’t know if he would have understood or even liked my painting. He was from the older school or photo-realism. I do some of that as well but the real fun for me comes from breaking boundaries and occasionally messing up my clothes and shoes. That trait I also inherited from my father. My mother would get so upset with him for finally getting a nice pair of shoes, only to get paint all over them. Essentially making them unwearable in polite society. Like we did that all that often anyway.

Perhaps a little history would be appropriate here. I was born and raised in California and then transported to Michigan as a teenager. (A quick note here; I liked California way better.) While in Michigan I was indoctrinated into farming. My grandfather owned a farm and my brother and I were expected to participate in “chores”. Did I mention that it was a pig farm?

Time passed and eventually I went to Michigan State University. With very mixed results. I didn’t understand what they were trying to teach me in the Art Department and I discovered the opposite sex and beer. Together, this made for a very lethal combination if a degree was what I had in mind. It wasn’t!

I joined the Navy. I thought that this was the one intelligent decision that I had made since being hijacked from California by my parents. I changed my mind somewhere on the drill field (the “grinder”) in boot camp. The good news was that I was back in California (San Diego). The bad news was way to many things to list here! However, I will list a few: Drill routines, doing laundry and hanging my clothes up by tying them to a clothesline, the Watts riots, forced to wear boxer shorts, fire fighting school, standing watch over the clothesline, boxing-up all my civilian clothes and sending them home to Mom. She swears to this day that the arrival of that package was the first she knew of my enlistment. She’s old and a bit delusional. 

While in the service, I went to the Philippines, Japan, Viet Nam, Tahiti (sort of), San Francisco, Guam, and Cyprus. I also, met a lot of girls, drank a lot of beer, met a lot of Marines, took a lot of code, played a lot of folk music, witnessed an atomic bomb detonation, got into a lot of trouble (something for another blog), and got married (also something for another blog). It was an interesting time, if nothing else.

I’m not sure exactly how, but I survived, got an honorable discharge, and went back to college. This time, I was an almost 4.0 student, and owner of two degrees in a four year span. I also met a lot of girls, drank a lot of beer, made a lot of theater, became a professor at Illinois State University, and got divorced. 

Now, I am remarried, trying to make art, living in a beautiful home, making a website with a wonderful friend (Lisa Rizzo), and trying my very best to figure out…what’s next. There is a whole lot between making “my website and gallery” and …”what’s next” but…that’s for another couple dozen blogs!