Gallery Artists

BIOGRAPHY/HISTORY "In 1617, my family came to this country with a charter from the king allowing them to govern. Two hundred years later they loaded up their linens and their Lomoges and headed West. It took them twenty years to go from New York to California. Along the way, towns were lived in, elections were held, and babies were born. They continued west until they reached Visalia, a small verdant California town, then the capitol of the State. They homesteaded there and started a sheep and cattle ranch. My grandfather and my mother were both born in Visalia. The ranch is still in the family. The West is in my blood. As a kid I lived mostly in rural places. My mother had a gypsy heart and we moved often. Much of the time my schoolmates were farm boys, picker's children, and Native Americans. When I was two my mother decided that I was an artist. For years I never went anywhere without a box of crayons and a coloring book. When I reached college age I was thirsty to learn everything there was to learn about art. I still am. I've been painting for real now for close to fifty years. I have four children, all grown. I raised them on what I could earn as an artist. It wasn't hard. My paintings have usually sold well and my kids are great. I've been passionate about the West pretty much my whole life. Wherever I go I seem to connect with people who have lived the Western Life. We talk. These days I follow my instincts. When it feels right I ask if I can take their pictures. My portfolio is growing with paintings done from photographs of people I meet who seem to embody the American Spirit. Independent. Fearless. Loyal. Hard-bitten. Hard-working. Determined. Icons of the American West. The house I live in now was built as a boarding house in nineteen hundred two. It sits atop a hill just up from the Pacific Ocean and looks like it belongs on a Western Movie Set. Only it doesn't. It's the real thing."

ARTIST'S STATEMENT "I read somewhere that to evaluate and artist one must examine the art knowledge and sophistication of that artist's audience. Good advice, but I say, 'Look at the work.' My hope in painting is to discover what lies beneath and find heat and pulse and viscera beneath skin. Paintings are mute things. They must do their dance without words. Watercolor is the medium I know best and it's tricky stuff. One cannot simply lay paint on paper and think that the job is done. The colors need to be played with and coaxed, even coerced into being. Mixing a palette-full of a righteous red is no guarantee that one will end up with a red that works. A painting must be persuaded into being. It's as if a deal must be struck. There is a zone in making art where time stops and there is no ceiling or floor. Nothing and no one exists beyond artist and tool. This is where the magic happens. In this place there are no words. And something new gets born. For myself I have yet to do the perfect painting. Sometimes I do get very close. In this last year I've stumbled into this zone more often than in previous times. It's as if I'm being pulled ahead by an unstoppable equine force. Paint seems to gush from nowhere onto the page. I'm there but I'm not controlling the tide. I think this might be the reason I paint."