I grew up in a small rural community in Northern Illinois. After military service, I graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where I studied lithography, photomechanical lithography, oil painting, drawing, and sculpture.
From 2003 to 2008 I worked in a series of works on paper (watercolors) titled “The Little Things”; a contemporary series depicting objects that I selected because of their shape, color, patina, and personal or social significance that I enhanced through the process of painting. These watercolors; described as humorous, unsettling, and engaging are minimalistic with no background, lending emphasis and focus to each rendered object. I rendered each object representationally in watercolor allowing them to transform as they must through the act of painting. Mindful of these transformations, I often subtly enhanced individualistic qualities or characteristics imbuing the objects with subtle changes of character not inherent in the original object. I referenced each object with a title and number. The titles used to enhance or subtly and conceptually change perceptions of the objects.
Early in my career I painted in oil and encaustic, but felt a desire to work in more challenging mediums and began experimenting with watercolors. From 1988 to 2006, I worked almost exclusively in that medium, which I found rewarding and challenging. My first series in watercolor ran from 1989 to 1999 and featured paintings of Chicago’s viaducts, roadways, and bridge structures. A subsequent series again in watercolor ran from 1999 to 2002, combining interior structural architecture with tropical plants found in the Chicago botanical conservatories of Lincoln Park and Garfield Park.
While making art, I have worked as a museum preparator and exhibit project coordinator at The Field Museum of Chicago, The Shedd Aquarium, and The Chicago Children’s Museum. I have taught watercolor painting at Columbia College Chicago, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Water soluble printmaking and watercolor painting at Gallery 37 for Anchor Graphics and the Chicago Department of Cultural affairs. During the summer of 2006 I taught watercolor painting in Florence, Italy for Columbia College Chicago in conjunction with Santa Reparatta International School of Art. Later that same year my family and I moved to Northwest Indiana where I taught drawing at Indiana University at South Bend. Since November 2006 I have taken ceramic classes at Lill Street Art Center in Chicago and have changed my creative focus from watercolor painting to pottery. I am now a full time potter working from my home studio in New Carlisle, Indiana.
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