For Kids
Originally from Great Falls, Montana, I grew up surrounded by art — mostly nostalgic celebrations of the Old West by the likes of Charles M. Russell and Frederick Remington. I found there was more to art by the time I attended Gonzaga University and spent my junior year in Florence, the home of Michelangelo and Botticelli. There I became enamored of the serene beauty of Renaissance painting.
After receiving a degree in art history, I went on to the Art Institute of Seattle to pursue a career as an illustrator. At the time — the mid-eighties — there was a whole school of illustrators whose work was semi-primitive and had an ironic twist. The style died out by the nineties but I consider it well worth reviving.
Now living in Spokane, I have done several murals in addition to my easel paintings, I’ve illustrated five books and several magazine articles, I draw caricatures at parties and conventions, and I teach drawing and painting at the Spokane Art School and the Corbin Art Center. My work has been exhibited in galleries in Spokane, Seattle, and Portland.
I work mostly in acrylic and oil with hard edges, intense colors, and finicky detail. I like to show what’s absurd but not impossible, to take the ordinary out of context, and to turn the familiar into the strange.
