Biography

Born in Los Angeles, I grew up in the lovely town of Oxnard, California, where my father converted an old shed in our backyard into a darkroom to "keep me off the streets" while I was in high school.

I began college at California State University, Northridge as a photography major, but as graduation approached and I realized there were no "Help Wanted: Photographer" ads in the classified section, but plenty of entry-level graphics jobs, I switched my emphasis to graphic art in my final year. In 1980 I got my BA in Art. That led to a 35+ year career in graphic design, mostly in San Diego, CA. Upon retirement, my wife and I moved to northern Virginia.

In 2008, with my daughter about to depart for college, and my midlife artistic crisis in full bloom, I felt the time was right to work on some purely personal artwork. I devoted a couple of years to building up a body of work, and posted the resulting images to an online artist's community, eliciting positive reviews and valuable feedback. By 2010, with my hard drive filling up with image files, I took the advice of one of my earlier art professors to "enter every show you can", which lead to pieces being accepted into a variety of juried exhibitions around the country. Now, in my sixties, I'm looking for my "big break".

"I have been taking and making pictures since the days when it made your fingers smell (aaahhh... fixer). At first I lamented the departure of film, but the digital medium certainly has its advantages. So while I do some computer processing of most of my images, I try and limit it to things that I could have done in the darkroom. It is important to me that the pictures are not overly synthetic."

"The series of paper images began quite by chance. While shooting some food pictures, I realized that the paper I was using as a backdrop was quite interesting on its own. And as I worked more and more with paper, I came to see it as the perfect subject: it is cheap, comes in an almost endless variety of colors and textures, and is quite willing to sit for hours under the lights for multiple shots while I cut, fold, fiddle with position, etc."

"In my photography I continue to explore abstracts, still lifes, figurative images, conceptual pieces, and my own variations on historical art imagery. Ultimately I am most inspired by the phenomenon of nature that we call “light”, by its human offspring vision and perception, and by the amazing things that happen when the three come together. I also love a nice picture of a cute kitten now and then."