South Bank Studio Gallery

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I have always struggled to write an artist's biography - a collection of facts that say I am entitled to be a painter - because it seems as though a series of paintings and drawings should speak for themselves, should be able to convey a study of traditional painting, a history of exhibitions, and that I've labored to gain a little insight into the painting process.  If the work does not reflect that, or does not have some metaphoric qualities, then I have failed at the task.  The learning process though, carries on, and all that has gone before is folded into layers of paint and consciousness in each new attempt to record what the years have imprinted inside the heart and soul. 

- I have been fortunate to record  in watercolor, the skies of each season just the way I saw them, just the way they felt.

- Had many of those skies and their landscapes accepted for exhibitions in local, regional, national and international competitions.

- I delivered what I think was an excellent fine art experience to over 11,000 students in 31 years of teaching.

- Worked as the Chair of Fine Arts at the largest high school in Colorado. 

-Rode my bicycle to work at least once a week over my teaching career and then twice rode it solo across America raising money for cancer research in memory of a friend.

-Worked in a cemetery, on a farm, in a potato chip factory, with the Forest Service and on the State Highway system.

-Tipped breakfast waitresses extra.

- Ran for public office and lost by 40 votes, then ran a campaign where my candidate won as an independent against a Democratic incumbent in a Republican county.

-Stayed off the Interstates, sticking pretty much to the Blue Highways and dirt roads of America.

-Tilled the soil and drilled the seed.

- Played guitar and banjo a little and sung an occasional song that could make the dogs howl.

- Planted trees then and now.

- Worked with and learned from some extraordinary friends, colleagues and family.

I am lucky enough to have a studio in Denver and one on the family ranch that my wife Jo and I manage in the Nebraska panhandle, spending a good part of our free time in the farm house that sits on the south bank of the Niobrara river.

While there are drawings, photographs and some new works in oil, most are watercolor, the medium I chose and came to know early on as a painter.  Watercolor seems to convey unlike any other medium, a freshness, vitality and honesty in the subject matter chosen by the artist.  I guess, in a way, watercolor chose me rather than the other way around.  The simple act of putting brush to paper, releasing translucent waters, watching them flow and carry liquid color to places unknown, places that will never grow old, captured me forever.  The partnership one must learn to live with using watercolor, begins with the realization that more often than not, you will be unable to control the medium , that you will need to follow where it leads, and that you'll need to get back on your paint horse when the fickle nature of watercolor bucks you off. 

To broaden the artistic challenge, recent works stray from representational watercolors and  are non-objective pieces done in oil.

In the days before Interstate Highways and ironic signs like "Scenic Overlook" [Here's a nice scene but you are in such a hurry you might as well overlook it!] car registrations were strapped to the steering column, radios played only AM stations, and glove boxes had highway maps inside that displayed a flourish of blue lines that delineated the smaller, secondary roads that could take you to places and towns like Romeo, Two Buttes, Wynot, Hazard, Jack's Cabin, Broadwater and Friend

More often than not, these ancillary roads or "Blue Highways," found themselves conforming to the landscape rather than making the landscape conform to them.  As they sought the best and narrowest points to cross rivers and streams, curved like ropes around cottonwood groves, hills and buttes, and sometimes diverted themselves to accommodate a barn, church or local landmark, these blue highways revealed a visual feast of rural America.  As a boy I started driving these roads on my way to summer ranching jobs in the Nebraska panhandle.  The blue highways took me to big skies and vast grassland prairies of my fore-fathers where the subtle and sometimes harsh beauty provided me with a sense of place.  Once I had worked the land, irrigated the fields and harvested the grain, the "country" was in me to stay and would come to define my art.  It would prove to be a fine place to cut my teeth as a landscape painter in a medium I chose for its transcending beauty, its difficulty, its mystery - watercolor.