About the Artist
Having taught high school art with a Masters degree for 38 years, I have a diverse background in art materials, processes and concepts. While working on my college degrees in art education and studio art, I focused on drawing, printmaking and jewelry making. During the years that I taught high school art education, I concentrated on landscape watercolor painting. After retiring from public education, I turned my attention to acrylic painting.
It really doesn’t matter what medium or process in which I work; I just love creating or fixing stuff with my hands. As with so many watercolor painters, I focused on landscapes especially with old barns. I thoroughly enjoyed driving around Minnesota and Wisconsin with my camera looking to shoot subject matter to paint back at home. But after 43 years of subject-orientated paintings based on my photographs, I was striving to be more inventive. As much as I enjoy working with all materials, I found acrylic paints easier to manipulate, didn’t require a recognizable subject matter, and didn’t require expensive production equipment and space.
With each creative adventure, I often times finds myself feeling transported into another dimension as if time no longer exists and my imagination and hands go about materializing a new image with color, line, texture, a sense of movement, balance, expression, and mood. With acrylic paints, I can enthusiastically play with abstractionism—creating occasional colorful, expressive, and whimsical forms of landscapes as well as non-objective compositions. I think of my artwork as a theatrical production in which the viewer is allowed to temporarily suspend disbelief. For the viewer, my artwork becomes a momentary distraction—a gift of enchantment, amusement and emotional connection.
To view my award winning artworks from the past several years, please visit my “Award Winners” page. If you are curious, you should visit my sold or “Adopted Paintings” page which includes some of my old watercolors.
“When I paint an abstract picture (the problem is very much the same in other cases), I neither know in advance what it is meant to look like nor, during the painting process, what I am aiming at and what to do about getting there. Painting is consequently an almost blind, desperate effort, like that of a person abandoned, helpless, in totally incomprehensible surroundings.”
–Gerhard Richter
“The world doesn’t make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?”
–Pablo Picasso