My art career started the day I told my mother I wanted to be an artist at age 12.  It has been a long and winding road ever since.  After growing up in Southeast Alaska working in my dad's fishing, logging and pile driving businesses I got on a bicycle and rode from Seattle to New York City to start formal art school at Parsons School of Design.  I majored in sculpture and art education but dropped out after a mugging.  Got the hell out of there and applied to  The Wendell Castle School and earned an associate degree in furniture design and making.  After 8 winters on the East Coast I moved back home.  I then spent 20 years concentrating on furniture. After landing a dream  day job as a fishing guide during our summer tourist season I started taking photos of the landscape and old wooden work boats with my cheap waterproof camera.  I use those photos as references for landscape paintings and paintings of old wooden work boats.  I still design and build furniture, currently finishing up some public seating for our local museum. After years of day jobs I have an opportunity now to focus more on my work.  I take occasional commissions but prefer to make one offs of furniture.  I am currently working on some sculpture at long last and looking forward to see where that takes me.  Ketchikan is a nurturing and inspiring place for an artist.  

I prefer oil paints when I paint and enjoy drawing with ink, graphite, colored pencils, oil pastels, conte crayons and paint sticks. For my furniture I like to use Cherry, walnut or ash or some of the local wood found in Southeast Alaska such as Alaska yellow cedar and Sitka spruce and red alder.  I incorporate metal in my furniture and am looking forward to using more in the future.  When painting I prefer to make my own stretchers and stretch my own canvas when working on larger paintings.

I enjoy the outdoors  which is what inspires my landscape and seascapes.  The Tongass National Forest where I live is a magnificent place.  I like physical work and enjoy creating and building.  Nature inspires all my work and I am drawn to the simplicity in Scandinavian design and Japanese aesthetic.