I owe my initial interest in making art to growing up in a rural area and having access to the forest and fields near my house (living in a 150-yr.-old fieldstone house with no electricity or running water), roaming around with my dog and my imagination.
I was schooled in identifying herbs and useful plants and trees, a practice that I maintain today. During high school my family moved into the city, where I took every art course that I could. After graduation I enrolled in the US Navy during the Vietnam conflict.
I was trained in communications and electronics and used those skills to make my living most of my life, but never gave up my interest in the arts. After leaving the service I enrolled in college and, three colleges later, received a Bachelors in painting and sculpture with a minor in art history.
Before I left school I had won a best-of-show and a mention in printmaking. My final year, I shared a studio with a NYC second-generation expressionist of renown and began making abstract paintings and sculpture. This built a reputation of a sort, and enabled me to have a one-person show at a NY museum and to be invited to a number of gallery shows.
I moved from NY to Boone, NC, and stayed there for almost 15 years. I found a burgeoning art community and participated in an alternative gallery, as well as established galleries, and found an interest in art activism. While there I helped organize an arts council, a fine arts cooperative, and participated in several arts oriented co-op galleries.
I was able to realize a dream that was fostered while sailing in the Caribbean by moving with my wife to Hawai’i. We lived there for 8 years. I mostly worked in technical fields but was in the stable of several galleries on the Big Island.
In 2002 we moved to Taos, and have lived in the county ever since. We started a gallery in Taos and moved to a second location soon due to the high overhead. We eventually moved to a location that allowed us to have a small gallery, studios, and living space.
It was from there we moved to Questa and started ArtQuesta gallery. Questa is a beautiful place to live and work.
