I was born and raised in Connecticut , served in the U.S. Navy as a signalman and as an adult have lived in Hawaii, San Francisco, Los Angeles, the Pacific Northwest, and currently outside of a small town in the high desert Southwest.Beginning at age 10, I have always worked, first as a caddy then as a busboy, janitor, computer designer, waiter and bartender, jackhammer jockey and related labor, electrician's apprentice, pipefitter and plumber's apprentice, retail clerk in photofinishing, books(2) times, pets and supplies, handyman, truck driver and signmaker. As a child I always drew and painted and was first published in print at age 12. My formal Art education began at the University of Hawaii and continued at City College of San Francisco and Academy of Art College. And informally, is ever ongoing. I consistently worked in illustration, including 3 books, advertising design and logotypes, retail environment design, hand lettering with brush and pen, surface and glass gilding, large- scale wall graphics and to date 34 murals as well as numerous paintings and mixed-media pieces. My primary focus for the last 35 years now is almost entirely on the work displayed on this site.
After a long apprenticeship and some success in professional art it became increasingly apparent to me that the usual rewards of such a life left me feeling unsatisfied. i repeatedly asked myself "Is this all there is?". Work, spend and die? Nearing 40 I understood that if I never aspired to more, that regret would haunt me for the rest of my life and leave me feeling as if I'd never lived up to my potential. I decided to cut back on work,
live on less and give myself 5 years to experiment and find out what I had in me. What was my 'territory' so to speak. If I couldn't find it, at least I
gave it an honest try and would return to being a brush for hire, competent if not inspired. Skip ahead after years of dispiriting "Not Its!", there was a health crisis that sidelined me for about 6 months and I was unable to constantly hustle, which had been my life as a freelancer, however established. Only then, with the first real hiatus in my life, did I have a breakthrough piece and was able to say"That's where I belong". From that point onward it has been a different universe and the excitement and joy of that time has remained with me to this day.