About

Artist’s Statement:

I believe that the creative impulse is the only thing we have going for us in the toughest times. I began my career as a graphic designer in the early 1990′s. Since the late 90’s I’ve been a full-time multimedia artist, which has caused my work to blossom and evolve. Some of my public work goes back even further – into the early 1980’s when I worked as a photographer’s assistant and received some public notice for my drawing and painting projects. My work in abstract expressionism began in late 2001 when I became fascinated by the life and work of Jackson Pollock.

As a self-taught artist I’m not sure I have one neatly-defined style. The things that I have admired, I have absorbed. Thus many styles are incorporated into my ever-expanding portfolio. In my work I deconstruct and document the world as I see it; the beauty and the ugliness, the caring and the heartlessness – and the mechanical cosmos that underlies all. My work addresses life’s duality from gender issues to birth and decay. These themes may combine with the metaphors of the mundane so that things are never only about what they appear to be, with my frequent work in black and white suggesting the colorless underpinnings of a world in which all colors of meaning are artifice.

I usually work on several projects concurrently. I also create show-specific, theme-specific works from time to time as well as collector-directed commissioned works.

Concurrent projects:

“Abstract Expressionism in Black & White” – a Pollock-inspired series of large format paintings using drip, spray and other action techniques, exploring the neural space of abstract expressionism without resorting to color. An ongoing series commenced in 2007 and found here on this site.

“Oregon Natural” – A series of impressionist paintings,drawings and photographs depicting the natural beauty of Oregon. The paintings/drawings portion of this body of work include watercolors, oils, pastels, graphite drawings plus a few experimental India ink works in the abstract impressionist style I learned from my teacher Domenic DiStefano, with additional influences from the works of Homer and Degas. Ongoing work since 2002. Some of my impressionist work may be viewed online at The Painter of Oregon Gallery.

Graphic Arts – Over many years, I’ve found a great deal of satisfaction from drawing humorous cartoons and caricatures, and my work in this area has received some acclaim. There are several characters that I am continuing to develop. Among these special characters are Widget and Skeptical Cat. In addition, my body of work is evolving with interesting typographical and abstract designs. Some of my design work can be found at ToonZ Me.

“The Feral Life” – A photo documentary essay on the lives of real  feral cats and their struggle to survive. All photography in this series is done within two feral cat colonies on the Oregon coast. This work is naturalistic, raw and gritty. There are no studio shots or set-up poses, only real life – as it is. Currently this body of work is available as a calendar and forthcoming book, and some is documented at the Feral Cat Rescue Project. My feral cat documentary photography work was recently featured at the Center For Fine Art Photography in Colorado.

“Rural Street Photography” – Photography project documenting life in its most mundane, depicting only ordinary people living the most ordinary lives; on the streets, of small towns, in the markets of rural America, on the boardwalks and beaches of tiny tourist traps – captured candidly and silently. It is observation without obfuscation; recording without affecting. Inspired by the works of America’s greatest unknown street photographer, Vivian Maier. A million people have street photography projects going in urban target-rich environments; country people deserve attention, too! Continuing project since 2009 and partially covered here. Street photography is a type of documentary photography that depicts people’s lives as they are lived in public spaces. Sometimes there is a fine line between street(public) portraiture and straight street photography and I straddle that line on a daily basis.

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I’ve done my bit as a corporate cog, a graphic designer and a wedding photographer’s assistant. After many years of living in denial, though, I’ve finally accepted my place in life as the local outcast. Now I find that all I care about is creating. Nothing else matters. Nothing.

Biography

Born in Portland, Oregon, I grew up in very difficult times and outside the mainstream of America. My family was often homeless due to alcohol and drugs, and our lives often seemed to wallow in violence and addiction. We lived in a car a lot, and so there’s a family joke about being from Bel Air … but in our case, it was a 1956 Chevy Bel Air, copper and cream-colored. I slept on the back window deck when I was little. At some point after one of my sisters escaped, I graduated to sleeping on the back seat. I wrote a tiny bit more about those times here. I can tell stories about eating flour on a stick or the fact that I didn’t get my first pair of shoes until I started school (a year late because we were homeless). These things may be relevant to understanding who I am but I will leave that for you to decide.

Perhaps my never-ending search for the meaning of existence stems from those times. Or perhaps it comes from being the progeny of extremely brilliant but emotionally unstable people – being in my own way crazy as they were. In any case, my dramatic early life shaped who I am and the stories themselves can be rather hard to stomach for some – and part of why I suffer from PTSD and depression to this day – but this page is about my life as it relates to art, not my suffering. I have tried to overcome all of the bad things and while some still haunt me, I prefer to NOT dwell on them.

I started painting and drawing prolifically about age four. Of course, when your family is often homeless you aren’t an artist, you’re a vandal. I painted on walls and sidewalks because that’s all there was. So I was also taught at an early age that art is bad. It took me a long time to learn differently. By age for or so I had figured out that pieces of asphalt could be used to make marks on any kind of wall. If I didn’t draw with pieces of asphalt, I chewed them. I liked the taste and besides there often wasn’t enough food in those days.

When I was eight years old my father committed suicide. He shot himself in the head – in that very car pictured above. I never got to see the body or go to the funeral. It wasn’t allowed. I think my father’s ashes became the property of the state. I’ll never know the story, I guess. Despite the threats to kill me and my mother, I still was devastated by the loss of my father and missed most of a year of school. When I recovered, I buried myself even deeper into art.

I drew and painted people & landscapes in addition to abstracts, mostly pretty but innocuous things. Occasionally some of my art would cause some worry – Satan Claus for instance – but I managed to survive the counseling and the fretting. Art was my escape from this world and having been forced out of wall-based art I turned to more legitimate expression.

As a child I spent every free moment drawing and painting. At that age art may have been an anesthetic but it never crossed my mind to make it a career. If I had thought of such a thing I’m sure I would have been told it was a stupid idea. Also, I’ve never been terribly interested in being “good” by some academic standard nor have I sought out someone to teach me how to do things “right” – instead I have only followed my own inner path… and we all know where that leads.

In Junior High I fell in love with photography, thanks to one father figure replacement, science teacher Burford Wilkerson. Thanks, dad. …My earliest work was with my beloved Polaroid. Since we were a very poor family, however, I didn’t get to experiment as much as I wanted. Nevertheless, I still managed somehow to take hundreds and hundreds pictures – probably none of which survived. We still had to move around a lot and as with childhood, there was nothing I ever owned that I got to keep. Ever.

I have always had an overactive need to discover meaning and purpose…. I remember how, on my fourth birthday, I sat on a curb contemplating what it meant to have lived four years already -and wondering how many more there would be! I got my first Bible school diploma at age 10. Then during my teens I became very interested in alternatives such as paranormal research and phenomena. I read voraciously and took correspondence courses whenever I could find them.

Well, everyone has to make a living and so I became a commercial fishing boat captain at 18. I found it mind-numbingly boring even though I liked the solitude of the sea, so at 19 I went to college. I attended Eastern Oregon and majored in Sociology with a minors in music and photography. Later I went to Clatsop for a Law Enforcement major. Then I attended Northwest Bible College and United Theological Seminary. When I needed some more job skills, I attended Western Medical College and graduated suma cum laude. There was a period where I pastored a church. I was even a wedding photographer’s assistant for a while – a happenstance of fate that dramatically improved my photography skills.

But I have never managed to lead a normal life. I’ve spent much of my life living in denial about that, too. It’s only been very recently that I’ve managed to accept that I’m just a retard and that’s all I’ll ever be. Idiot savant sounds nicer, though.

Art continues to be a source of meaning and fulfillment, however artificial and temporary. There is a certain duality within my work and that reflects the duality within me. Abstraction and impressionism, fantasy and reality, male and female – all colliding and forming possibilities new and different.

So where are we? From here, my intention is to continue with my work in the many areas of painting and photography, as well as keeping my street creds as a generalist and painter of Oregon. And should you be wondering, I will not let down those who have invested in my work. I feel I owe it to those who collect my work to do everything I can to ensure future value. People who choose to own my art are my family.

Am I a successful artist? I don’t know. I am always striving yet I realize that success in art is as much a state of mind as a reality. Nevertheless, I have a gallery that represents me and a few collectors who seem to love my work.

Homeless no longer, I often prefer to feel the freedom of the road and i don’t really invest a lot of thought in mortal comforts. You see, for me, home is where my art is.