Brief Bio:
After what I considered two incredible years, I graduated from the Rocky Mountain School of Art in 1980. My love of drawing began in 1976, as I studied Technical Illustration at The Denver Institute of Technology. I quickly found out this type of drawing was not enough to satisfy my love of drawing, and after working as a patent draftsman/illustrator/office manager in a small drafting shop… I wanted more. My employer casually remarked, “go to art school” and the path to being an artist was forged.

I moved from Boulder to Denver into a studio apartment in 1978 and started art school. I would work as a free-lance patent draftsman in order to pay for art school. The instructors at the Rocky Mountain School of Art were incredible. The founder of the school, Phil Steele, was a student of Bridgeman; Jim Valone was a student of Hans Hoffman; Bob Thomas was “the” guy to go to for questions on color, and John Lencicki was the painting instructor that made you work very hard to get it right. The late ‘70’s and early ‘80’s were all about abstract expression. Only a few students were interested in traditional painting arts. I was no exception. My heroes were deKooning, Rothko, Pollack, Clyfford Still.

I worked for Ball Aerospace in the publication department as a lead illustrator and did watercolor landscapes at lunch. Later I worked for Douglas Astronautics in the Computer Based Training division as a computer graphic artist and would paint non-objective art at night. I worked for a couple of design studios as a paste up artist/commercial designer and would paint in the evenings. I kept painting and showing both acrylic/pastel abstracts and traditional watercolor landscapes during this period.

Landscape painting in oil became an interest of mine when a flier from the Art Students League showed up in my mailbox, and Denver University offered evening design classes and workshops which I would take. The Art Students League flier offered landscape classes with Doug Dawson and the love of plein air painting was rekindled. Drawing class with John Lencicki, painting with Doug Dawson, Ron Hicks, Kim English, Ken Valastro, Joshua Fallik, life drawing, David Mayer workshops… I continue to take art classes and workshops. .

I am a member of the Denver Art Students League, Pastel Society of Colorado and the Colorado Artist Guild.