 I
grew up in
Wisconsin, my family moved to Kentucky, and I graduated from Western
Kentucky University with a Bachelor of
Fine
Arts degree, concentrating in Painting and Drawing, and certified to
teach
Art K-12. I taught junior high Art in Louisville, Kentucky for one
year,
then moved to northern New York where I had teaching
positions
at St. Regis Falls Central School, Brushton-Moira Central School, and
finally
as high school Art teacher at Madrid-Waddington Central School for 29
years. From 1990 to 2003
I was also the Adjunct Instructor for Art Methods at St. Lawrence
University in Canton, NY and in 2004 and 2005 I taught in the SLU "Adirondack Semester".
I
retired from Madrid-Waddington in 2001 to
pursue a full time career as an artist. In January 2005 I moved to a
1932 "Sears" house in Saranac Lake, NY - in the heart of the
Adirondacks.
My
work has gone through several phases, beginning with a futile
search
for my own style in the midst of Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art,
through
several periods of dormancy, a stretch of wildlife art, to my current
investigation
of wilderness landscapes in oils and watercolors and the incorporation
of those landscapes into Tibetan mandalas.
I
have
primarily worked within the format of realism, but feel a
great
sense of beauty in the abstract forms, colors, and patterns of nature.
All my landscapes are all real places, places I have been to that
touched
my spirit in some way. There is a great deal of careful compositional
planning
in the mandala paintings where I often try to relate the forms and
colors
of specific landscapes to the symbolic structure of traditional
mandalas.
I've
completed several grant funded projects: in 1997 I was awarded a
Fellowship for Independent
Study
by the Council for Basic Education (a part of the National Endowment
for
the Humanities). My topic was "A
Personal Investigation of 19th Century and Contemporary Landscape
Painting
in the Adirondacks and St. Lawrence Valley". While I did extensive
reading, research, and made visits to several museums, I also hiked,
canoed, and painted. That initiated a
concentrated
effort to portray both the natural and spiritual beauty of the
wilderness
landscapes of the Adirondack Mountains. A New
York State Council on the Arts Decentralization Grant awarded for
1999
continued the same theme and I produced a series of paintings of
locations
19th century artists had painted. I received a second
NYSCA Grant in 2001: "Forever
Wild: An Artistic Exploration of Recently Acquired State Lands". My
current work is totally focused on
the Adirondack wilderness and in particular on the places near where I
live, hike, paddle, and ski.
My
work has been accepted in juried exhibitions across the country
including
"Nature Interpreted", at the Museum of Natural History, Cincinnati, OH;
Arkansas Wildlife Federation Exhibits, at the Southeast Arkansas Arts
&
Science Center, Pine Bluff, AR; the National Western Small Painting
Exhibit,
at Bosque Farms, NM; the Spencer Crest Nature Learning Center &
Museum,
Corning, NY.; the North American Wildlife Art Show, Cheyenne, WY; the
North
Country Regional Art Exhibit, at the Gibson Gallery, State University
of
New York, Potsdam, NY; "Midwest Winter", at The Center for the Visual
Arts,
Wausaw, WI; Greene Co. Arts Council, Windham, NY, "Artistic
Interpretations of the Environment" Adirondack
Park
Visitor Interpretive Center, Paul Smiths, NY; the Arnot Museum, Elmira,
NY; the Lake Placid Center for the Arts, Lake Placid, NY; the National
Exhibition of American Watercolors at the Arts
Center
at Old Forge, NY; a National Watercolor Show of the Georgia Watercolor
Soceity, a West Harlem Art Fund Exhibit; Laighton Galleries in
Schenectady, the Central New York Community Arts Council Gallery in
Utica,
a National Juried Show in Montpelier, VT, and is in the collection of
St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY and
many private collections. Since
1999 I have had solo exhibitions in Canton, Saranac Lake, Lake George,
Paul Smiths,
Glens Falls, Old Forge, Camillus, and Lake Placid,
NY. I was in a group show at the Agora Gallery in New York
City in 2002. I currently display my work at The Gallery at 3040 Main
St., in Old Forge, NY and am a member of the Adirondack Artists' Guild
in Saranac Lake, NY.
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