I grew up in Monterey CA. I painted through my youth. I just knew I was going to be an “artist”…but it was the 60s! There was a war, and a draft, so I joined the Navy, got married and ended up with a career as a Navy Photographer.

A few years ago I was really wanting to start painting again, and I really wanted to go back to watercolor. To me watercolor shines! Quite literally…watercolor shines! When it is laid down cleanly with the whites intact, the sparkle in the image makes the painting a magnet to me. I can’t stop looking at it. I don’t believe any other medium forces a painter to work with what the paint wants to do the way watercolor does. It runs, bleeds, mixes and separates on its own - and I love it!　

For me, I believe that a lifetime isn’t enough to grasp the full capabilities of the medium and I am really sorry I wasted so much time finding my way back to it. 

I stand at my easel and draw, and contemplate; I make faces, stare, think some more and then put paint to paper. It is a wonderfully fulfilling task, trying to balance design, color, and style into an appealing representation of a local subject.

On rare occasions I dance! 

I dance when I am lucky enough to watch a most amazing event. While I hold my brushes in my hand, sometimes I watch them paint the image I am thinking about. And I start doing things on paper I am surprised to see. For when everything is just right, I am a bystander to the whole event that unfolds on the paper before me. And I look at the painting and wonder how I did that.

I have so much to learn and so many artworks to create. It’s been a long journey from my Monterey childhood to my Island painting, but I feel a connection to the kid who always believed he would some day become an “artist.”