When I was a young boy, my family lived next to an artist name Jack McLarty.  My bedroom window faced his backyard, and he would host big parties inviting most of the major Portland artists to his yard. I watched all the interesting people and was fascinated by them. They were nothing like my family. Later Jack painted a portrait of my mother who was beautiful and watching him work opened the door to the world of the painter. About that time my mother sent me to see a show by Van Gogh at the Portland Art Museum and while looking at his work I saw a drawing that spoke to me, and at eleven years old I decided I was going to be a painter. When I was sixteen, I was chosen to exhibit one of my paintings in a world traveling exhibit showing in every major museum from the Louvre to the Heritage. This set the benchmark for my artistic career.

I went to Viet Nam and afterwards I went to sea and worked the tuna fleets, painting pictures while at sea. When I was twenty-seven, I gave away everything I owned and walked the Lewis & Clark trail to St. Louis, selling small paintings at rest stops along the way. That journey left its impressions on me and taught me to see the world around me more clearly, washing the war out of my soul. I’ve been to war many times since and have seen man both good and bad and sometimes my painting reflects what I’ve come to understand about life. In my fifties I walked across all of Israel from the far north to the southern city of Eliat and painted a series about my wanderings. I wanted to see what G-D gave me. I’ve decorated large malls and hotels, such as the Sheraton and Embarcadero, to the John Jacob Astor in Astoria. One of my projects was razzle-dazzling the Alberta gas line from Canada to Oakland. I color schemed the Mt Bachelor Ski Resort and a good part of Sisters, Oregon. When I was sixty a few friends and I started a free pop-up art school called The Willamette Falls School of Art to bring free art classes to rural towns and villages throughout the west, including Mexico and Ecuador. In my seventies I’ve been working and teaching in Mexico half the year recording the beautiful city of Mazatlan.