Aa a self-taught painter who was introduced to watercolors at a workshop in 1980, I have enjoyed painting landscapes—the mountains and the prairies---the beauty of the seemingly ordinary world around us.
 

Since 1981 I have completed several hundred watercolors that have been exhibited and sold in galleries between the Black Hills and southeastern Montana.  These watercolors have won People’s Choice awards in Miles City, Montana's Custer County Art and Heritage Center’s  Annual Auction and have been accepted into the Eastern Montana Juried Art Show.  I also tried my luck at teaching watercolor workshops at the Custer County Art and Heritage Center before moving back to Rapid City, South Dakota in 2002. Since 2005 I have attended oil workshops taught by Phil Starke, Geroge Strickland, and Marc Hanson. From 2004 through the present I am an art tutor providing painting opportunities to a disabled gentleman. In both 2006 and 2007 I had been selected to participate in the Rapid City Club For Boys Annual Auction.  This past spring of 2007 I was accepted into the Artists of the Black Hills as an associate member.
 

Now that our two children have grown out of the family home, I have more time on hand to develop my painting.  My watercolors were painted in a very detailed, realistic manner.  While I enjoyed that expression, I also wanted to let loose and, so, I began to explore oils.  In 2005 I started working in oils, primarily en plein aire, with the goal of loosening up and painting more expressively.  Painting outside in the light of the day pushes the painter to quickly determine composition, color, values, and execution. Yikes!! What A Challenge!!! However, the time in the field is starting to produce results.  I am learning how to see the values, what colors mix with what to make what I see, the various elements that go into a solid composition, and just how do I hold the brush to put down the right color in just the right place in just the right way.  And, then, after that, the questions are what do I want to tell the viewer and how do I do that.  All are just the same eternal struggles artists have wrestled with since burnt wood was the preferred medium in the firelit caves of the ancients. 

During the past few years, I have learned more about the process of making a painting tell a story than in all of the previous quarter century. I am always on the lookout for those elusive compositions, tight value planes or the nuances in the color of light, even while driving to the grocery store. Observing strong work by other artists or challenging the mind and spirit in good workshops have given me greater understanding of just how far I have yet to go.  I hope to leave the viewer a profound sense of place in my paintings, sensing movement, feeling the coolness or the heat, smelling the descent of dusk, or seeing the light caught instantly on the air. When I can paint that…well, I guess that’s the journey.