Exhibition
Nocturnes, Riversea Gallery, Astoria, OR
Medley: Scholarship Benefit Show, Royal Nebuker Gallery, Astoria, OR
50 Years to Nowhere, Riversea Gallery, Astoria, OR
Expressions West - Juried Exhibit, Coos Bay Art Museum, Coos Bay, OR
Cascade AIDS Project Art Auction, Portland, OR
Stories from the Edge, RiverSea Gallery, Astoria, OR
From a Bare Hand – Solo Show, RiverSea Gallery, Astoria, OR
Pastel Society of the West Coast 18th International Exhibition, San Luis Obispo, CA
From Paris to Willapa – Group show with Andrew Pate and Noel Thomas, Astoria, OR
Juried Exhibit, Chanute Art Gallery, Chanute, KS
Biennial National Small Oil Painting Exhibition, Wichita Center for the Arts, Wichita, KS
Group Exhibition, Anchorage Federal Building, Anchorage, Alaska
Artist’s Statement
Everyone wears glasses. Think of them as corrective lenses, filtering meaning for each of us from an objective world. What we think, we see. My art is what I think I see.
Fortunately for me our human experiences vary widely, but not so much so I can’t reach anyone with my painted vision. There is a universal human perception developed by millennia of looking at the horizon and each other. This is why abstraction is a powerful tool. My painting can suggest what I think is meaningful from a place and time, and you can develop your view from personal memories and hopes.
“There is pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more.”
Biography
As a young child I lived on a state park in rural New Jersey, where my father was a ranger. Later our family had a home in Alaska’s Matanuska Valley, and later still (after a stint living in a ‘77 Corolla), Kodiak Island. It came as a surprise to me when I waded into my father’s waters and took a park ranger job after college, first in the southern plains of the US, and later for 16 years on the Washington Coast. I shouldn’t overly-romanticize being a ranger. The law enforcement work was especially unromantic. But, for most of my working life as a park ranger, I was outdoors and enjoying an interest and appreciation of natural things - especially landscapes. So, naturally, landscapes are burned into my retina rather like a computer monitor that was left on too long.
Because I’m also an educator (I now teach high school science), I’m wired to help others ask questions rather than explain. So when you look at my work, you might ask yourself (or better still ask the person next to you), “Are my feet on the ground?” Another question might be, “What is running counter to the idyllic, or the biological?” Change means tension, always. Those are some of the same questions I ask when painting, making breakfast, or watering the lawn. Hopefully from here, you can find some questions of your own.
