biography

I first recognized a desire to create art when I was 11 or 12 years old, headed west, out of Grand Junction, ostensibly to hunt pheasants. We never even saw any pheasants that day, and I've come to realize only recently that most of our hunting trips with our father were something else entirely. We never saw game birds, let alone shot any. We hunted rabbits with .22 caliber single shot rifles, when everyone else used shotguns. Needless to say we didn't kill many rabbits either. This was probably the foundation of my sense of fairness and total lack of interest in hunting. Anyway, on that particular day, the colors and shapes of the dried corn stalks, and yellowing leaves against the intense desert blue Colorado sky woke something in me. I wanted to paint. I had been drawing for years; had my Jon Gnagy screen for the TV, and sent in those “win an art scholarship” drawings from magazines. Suddenly I wanted to paint, and that meant Real Art. Of course, sculpture was the farthest thing from my mind, since, like most everyone else, I thought Art meant oil paint.

My initial attempts were copies of Harold Bryant western paintings, which multiplied madly, becoming Christmas and birthday presents for unfortunate relatives. I even put them up for sale, over the soda fountain at the Rexal Drug where my father worked. Incredibly, some sold. I was hooked. Second only to the feel of creation, is the exhilaration of a sale—even forty years later.

I started college on an art scholarship. Coincidentally, Bruce Cody, a talented artist then and now, taught my first art class in college. I owe him a tremendous debt for completely humiliating me that first day. It was a "let’s see what you can do" assignment, with no restrictions on subject. I executed a very detailed rendering of a rural mailbox in a rustic setting. My realistic drawing was held up in front of the class, no, actually waved in outrage, as a perfect example of trite, unimaginative drivel. It was months before I drew, painted, or even thought of anything recognizable. It was “non-objective all the way for me: chevrons, checkerboards, and swirling shapes (this was 1966, remember)

Later, I began winning awards for my paintings, but slowly came to the realization that I was still not doing anything really unique. Moreover, there were many artists who would always paint better. This was not an acceptable state of affairs. I had this white knight personality defect derived from my other childhood occupation: devouring Zane Grey, Burroughs, and other unrealistically romantic authors in a compulsive frenzy. My personal version of the “Code of the West” (no doubt heavily influenced by that first college art class) dictated that following in the footsteps of others would compromise my artistic principles; therefore I needed a new art form, and "unique" became my Holy Grail.

Eventually, metal entered my life, along with another freethinking art professor in the metal-smithing department at CSU in Ft. Collins. I began to catch glimpses from the corner of my eye of an unexplored world. This was a place where most people worked in one metal (gold, silver, copper, etc.), and the more adventurous added gemstones. It appeared wide open to new interpretations like combining gold and silver in the same piece and using gems. Why not use patinas for some contrast? In fact why did this stuff have to be wearable? Well it didn’t. It could be called sculpture.

The desire to create perfection in pure form obsessed me for several years, until these small creations began to grow large enough to seem a little empty. Something was missing. Something recognizable. A little reality might bring life to a beautiful but empty landscape. Now I was fusing abstract and representational art. Although the reason for the change in style wasn’t clear at the time, they were a unique new direction. It didn’t matter why they worked, they did work.

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