Portfolio

Piazza San Marco in Venice, Italy, was one of the first of many magical places I've explored as an artist. The city floods with the high tide, and is slowly sinking into the mud below. I can't ever get my fill of Venice and return as often as I can. When the water is high, tabletops become public walkways. As the water recedes, many locals will wade through the knee-deep spots.

It's not hard to be inspired and overwhelmed, but it was a bit tricky selecting a manageable composition from the face of Chartres Cathedral, northwest of Paris France. These masterpieces of Gothic architecture appear to be an impossible puzzle of detail, but broken down into major shapes they can be an enjoyable challenge.

When I was informed that the judge for the a major watercolor competition was a painter that admittedly hated my work, I set out to change his tune. I spent only a little time painting this "off the wall" piece, and never signed it. When the kurmudgeon discovered that he gave my work the top award he was speechless. There were so many things I wanted to say, but instead I thanked him for giving me the opportunity to show him more of my work.

First Place, MOWS Invitational, 2008

Standing in front of the Duomo in Florence, Italy, one feels very small. The colosssal church towers over the city, adorned with so much detail it seems an impossible feat of architecture, especially knowing it was built entirely without modern tools. I chose a "human" perspective, sketching from the ground, looking up in awe. My composition reveals only a small slice of this magnificent place.

The center of Florence, Italy, the Duomo offers the best view of the city. From the top of Giotto's tower I constructed a slightly exaggerated view of the dome and the miles of terra cotta rooftops beyond. Climbing up the tower is a feat in itself. The tiny spiral staircase is never empty and to pass someone traveling the opposite direction meant both had to hug the wall and squeeze by. It is not a climb for the faint of heart, but the view was worth my ascent more than a dozen times now.

Color, transparency, reflection and distortion make for challenging work in watercolor but fascinate me to no end. The greater the challenge, the more intense the experience, the happier I am. This set of glasses and vases was irresistible to me when I saw them. I gave them to my wife as a gift, and as she unwrapped each one she set it on the dining room table. When she was done I saw a still life waiting to be painted. It was six months before we could eat at the dining room table again.

Best of Show at Columbia's Art in the Park, 2008

Best of Show at the Boston Mills Arts Festival in Cleveland, Ohio, 2008

Winner of the Beaver Bend Cash Award from the Kansas Watercolor Society Great 8 Exhibition. 2008

Having always been a collector of interesting things, I choose objects for my still life paintings for their shape or color, but mostly for the way they react to dramatic light. As a young bachelor my studio table was in my living room, with my back to the windows that illuminate much of my work. The vertiguous quality of this painting came from spinning constantly in my studio chair, observing detail then turning back to paint it. Maybe I was a bit dizzy at the time, but it was through this painting that I realized I could manipulate space by altering the perspective of the objects. Painting from sunlight also brings the movement of light and shadow, a challenge I used to my advantage in this painting, working on the objects to the right only in the morning, and moving to the objects on the left in the afternoon. The light seems to come from all directions, radiating throughout the composition.

Best of Show Rocky Mountain National, 1996

First Place, The Artist's Magazine competition, 1996

First Place, Winsor & Newton annual competition

Don't adjust your glasses. The double vision is an intentional element to draw you into a different perspective of the architecture. When the repeating elements overlap they create something entirely new.

Winner of the Jack Richeson Award from the Northwest Watercolor Society, 2008

A room with a view is always a reward in New York. This view was one of my most fortunate choices. From high up in my room at the Palace Hotel I had a spectacular view over St. Patrick's Cathedral. I caught the flu on this particular trip and spent my time confined to my room, capturing this cityscape through giant windows.

Winner of the Dong Kingman Memorial Award from the American Watercolor Society, 2006

First Place, Northwest Watercolor National, 2007

In search of dramatic light, interesting objects and colorful reflections, I am a seeker of all things interesting. Routine slowly kills my soul. The quest for new inspiration makes me feel alive.

Like actors waiting in the wings for their turn in the spotlight, the glass in my studio is frequently gathered and placed randomly in hopes that a composition will strike me. It seems that when I try to orchestrate the pieces, the results feel contrived. I love finding an accidental composition in the chaos that accumulates regularly around me.

Winner of Winsor & Newton's Annual Competition, 1997

The dramatic interior of Bath Abbey is one of my favorite examples of English architecture.. The ceiling was designed to give the impression that you are under the canopy of mighty trees. The stained glass windows glitter like jewels, creating a magical atmosphere for all who visit.

Cover of The Artist's Magazine, March 1998.

Included in the American Watercolor Society's International Exhibition, 1999.

Just the most beautiful bridge in Paris when I painted it, a friend informed me that it was a painting of Pont Neuf, thus the title. It wasn't until the painting appeared on the cover of The Artist's Magazine that I was corrected. According to the magazine's editor they have never received so much correspondence about a cover image. Apparently the concensus of Francophiles thought it to be a lovely painting, but incorrectly identified. Perhaps I should have changed the title to "Pont Alexander III", but it got so much attention I realized leaving it misidentified was a great conversation starter for other Paris aficionados.

Cover of The Artist's Magazine

My own fascination with the magical light that occurs at sunset often leaves me stumbling home in the dark. The busy waters around Venice would not be a place I'd want to be caught in a rowing scull after sundown. This sculler was squeezing the most out of his adventure, racing to port before the approaching storm arrived and the available light disappeared.

Cover of The Artist's Magazine

Bubbling with character and glowing with veils of transparent light, "Aurora" is my still-life interpretation of nature's phenomenal light show, the Aurora Borealis.

There is a certain vibration created when the perfect balance of colors are combined. I aim for that balance in much of my work, but this piece is my most successful attempt.

Certainly everyone feels this way at some point in time. For a caffeine addict, running out of coffee is just not acceptable. Revolutions have started over less.

I've never experienced a greater solitude than Yukon. Driving the Al-Can highway up to Alaska gave me weeks of it. In the summer, the sun never really disappears, but instead hovers just below the treeline for a seemingly endless sunset. This was pure gold for this lover of that magical time.

As a child I spent school breaks on Horn Island, an ununhabited barrier island off the Mississippi coast. It wasn't until art school that I learned of the work of Walter Anderson, an artist from Ocean Springs, Mississippi. Anderson spent much of his career painting in solitude on Horn Island. He rowed the 12 miles out to the island in a tiny rowboat, which I eventually discovered was a far better boat for the journey than an aluminum canoe.

On my first trip to Italy I wandered into the Vatican as the Pope was saying mass. As he prayed he would look upward to the roof of the baldiccino and the dome. I chose this perspective to draw from, but was escorted out three days in a row for sliding under the velvet ropes to get my view. It was many years later that I felt i had the ability to tackle such a complicated painting.

The story on Spot is still unfinished. This painting was created as a logo for the University of Missouri, and used as the blueprint for the massive Tiger Spot mosaic on the University campus. Reports of the demise of the mosaic have been greatly exaggerated, as Mark Twain might have put it. Spot is still there and still in the hearts of many Missourians. He's just hibernating, waiting to roar again in a different political climate.

Early in my painting career I found the attraction to reflection an addictive challenge. The more complicated, the more fun I have painting them. Admittedly, musical instruments are some of the toughest subjects, but I love the implication of sound on my silent canvas. This was my first entry in the American Watercolor Society's international exhibition in 1992.

Winner of the Hardie Gramatky Memorial Award from the American Watercolor Society, 1992

Collection of the Margaret Harwell Museum, Poplar Bluff, Mo.

The saxophone is one of the few instruments that sounds complete even when played unaccompanied. Put two of them together and they can make amazing harmony. The complicated construction of hundreds of reflective keys and rods make it the most challenging instrument to paint. I think the only thing tougher than painting a sax is painting two of them.

Original design for the Missouri State Quarter. How such a small and simple design could cause such a ruckus I couldn't have possibly imagined. This one did though. It contains a huge story that played out in newspapers, magazines and political circles around the country, but they distorted what really happened. Only a few people know the whole story, but it's a chapter I'll get around to writing eventually. It's a good one.

When I started college I had to be incredibly frugal with expensive art supplies. I figured that I could just mix all of my colors from the three primary tubes I could afford. This plan worked well for a year, but I never could quite achieve a bright purple, so I splurged and bought a tube of violet. This was my palette all the way through grad school. This painting symbolizes watercolor to me. Lots of energetic color and motion are what the medium is famous for.