Growing
up in central Wisconsin, I have always enjoyed and appreciated the
beauty of the rural landscape and farmland. My calling has always been
art, and at an early age I was already interested in becoming a
landscape painter.
In 1980
I left my hometown in Wisconsin and headed east to Gloucester
Massachusetts
to
study painting at the Gloucester Academy of Fine Art, under the
instruction of John C.Tarylac, who offered a direct master apprentice
system of study. It was there that I really began to expand as I
absorbed the Cape Ann influence and its rich history of early 20th
century American realist painters that had once lived and worked in the
area. Later I moved North Salem New York to study portraiture, the
figure and still life painting under the guidance of Daniel E. Greene.
While in New York I also began working with a mural painting company in
the city. That experience lasted for a number of years and offered me
the opportunity to travel the nation and as far away as South Africa
painting large scale exterior murals.
Today I have returned to my home town in central Wisconsin focused on
painting the rural landscape. I find the atmosphere and color just as
beautiful here as anywhere I have been. And I do not have to travel
very far to find subject matter. I am especially interested in painting
the old barns that are vanishing from the landscape at an alarming
rate.
Much
of my painting is more about the essence of the subject than a mere
representation of the scene before me. When I see that I have sparked a
positive emotion within the viewer, viewing a finished piece, then I
know I have done my job.
Sausalito
- Landscape Artist