About

I studied painting, drawing, and sculpture at the University of Kansas in the early 1990’s.  After moving to Colorado, I began drawing the amazing, natural outdoors on small pieces of paper when I was out bicycling or hiking.  Later, after moving back to Kansas for a time, I began drawing large numbers of inmate portraits at a county jail where I was volunteering.  I utilized a sort of quick and loose style with both the portraits and the landscapes I was doing.

When I moved to Southern California in 2008, I began focusing on “common and everyday” scenes of life such as traffic, buildings, sign boards, and incorporated these subjects into my repertoire of landscape and portrait drawing.  Currently, I am most interested in drawing the people and places where I live, here in Apache Junction, including the mountains, rodeos, restaurants, cars, bull riders, spectators, actors, horses.  I also paint murals of similar subject matter.

My early influences included the French illustrator Honore Daumier, the portrait painter Alice Neel, the sculptor Henry Moore, and Abstract Expressionism in general.  As of late, and largely due to living in the Southwest, I have looked to the painting of Frederic Remington, Charles Russell, and N.C. Wyeth.  Lastly, the presence of street art and murals in the Phoenix and Mesa areas, such as those by El Mac, have inspired my mural painting as well.