Biography
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    Born in Whittier, CA on November 15th 1973, I had been actively drawing throughout my early years. While rigidly structured weekend trips to my family's second home in Santa Ynez, CA made it difficult for me to develop social skills and relate to others of my age, I was given an opportunity to gather experience from a more broad set of influences. As early as I can remember, I took every opportunity to visit the Cody Gallery (in neighboring Los Olivos) so that I could study the works of Eyvind Earle. The Santa Ynez area itself is conducive to artistic inspiration, although I was unaware of this when I was young. Spending my weekdays living above our family-owned tractor dealership afforded me time to contemplate and study my self-expression, rather than be distracted by the typical after-school playmate/neighborhood friends relationship. While the lack of childhood social experience has been damaging to some of my personal relationships, it was invaluable to my development as an artist. Time alone was best spent drawing and designing structures with Legos. Art is like any other skill: It improves with practice, and I had a lot of practice before I ever thought of myself as an artist.

    Recognizing my artistic tendencies, my mother sought artists local to our two residencies to tutor me. In Whittier I studied under Denis MacGonagle, who's love of color clashed with my more mechanical thinking. Looking back, I missed out on a lot by not being as open-minded as I am now. I wonder how much of Dennis' skill was absorbed through osmosis while I was trying to fight his influence. In Santa Ynez, I studied pencil rendering under Liz Kyle and Ben Mead. Kyle was responsible for first instructing me in technical inking, and coached me to a double-victory in the Vandenburg Air Force Art Contest when I was thirteen.

    After Carden Grade School, I attended Whittier Christian Junior High, where I had my first school art classes - taught by Mrs. Langen. Ironically, her family also owned the local Whittier Art Store, where I was to purchase most of my art supplies years later in college. Most of my attention in junior high was paid to Robotech and my love of aviation. I made a couple close friends who had similar interests, but different styles. We have been good friends since (over 15 years now), and have nurtured each others' talents in a symbiotic manner. I learned that while formal instruction is often valuable, more can be learned through self examination and interaction with friends with whom one has good communication.

    The idea of self-teaching was further enforced in high school. I started Whittier Christian High School and finished my freshman year, but my parents transferred me to Don Bosco Technical Institute for my remaining high school years. From a scholastic standpoint they were right to do so, but it further harmed my ability to relate socially, especially since it was a strictly all-boy Catholic School. As the "technical" name implies, Bosco had seven "shops" that each covered a specific field. I chose Drafting And Design, because I enjoyed drawing and aircraft design - and because there was no art offered. My best friend and I were constantly getting into trouble for drawing female figures (when I wasn't rendering military aircraft), which started my experience in administrative persecution. By Senior year I had developed a severe case of "senioritis" and was doing poorly in calculus and physics.

    I had been planning to attend Harvey Mudd to pursue a career in aeronautical engineering, but I found myself plateau'ed at calculus. This also ruled out my backup plan of attending Cal Poly San Luis Obispo to pursue an architecture degree. I decided to attend Whittier College and enrolled with the idea of getting a Political Science degree to become a military analyst (which had always been a hobby). At Whittier I met Tom Rice, a painting instructor. He was a genius as far as I am concerned, because he was able to find the balance between force and freedom. I learned many different techniques from him, but was also allowed freedom to explore these techniques in my own way. He was my most influential teacher.

    Unfortunately, he was not able to afford to remain at Whittier, and was replaced by Kim Russo. Normally I see having an rabidly feminist instructor as a benefit. However, for the last 3 years of college I had three - at the same time - with no counter-balancing perspectives. David Sloan was the reigning sculpture professor, and I sought refuge outside of my medium under him, but I could not avoid the fact that I was by this time destined to be a painter. So I fought back against what I considered to be close-minded viewpoints as I thought best - by ignoring their criticism and continuing to paint. Unfortunately, during critiques my painting professors spent considerably more time criticizing my subject matter (mostly women) than my technique (which would have been more helpful). On the positive side, I quickly learned how to deal with harsh criticism, which has helped my greatly since.

    As a result of faculty biases, in my last three years of college I was entirely self taught; reading everything I could on artists I whose styles I found interesting, and incorporating what I could into my art. I learned a great deal from the work of Kandinski, Nagel, Frazetta, Mondrian, Monet, Renoir, Stella and Frank Lloyd Wright in particular. They all had strong influences on my development as an artist as well as my conceptualization of Formal Impressionism.

    When I graduated, I still had widely varying styles - I still loved to do traditional Impressionist work, but I was also generating strange paintings that would later form themselves into what I now call Formal Impressionism. I was turned away by The Art Center of Pasadena's graduate program, being told that I had not yet developed a marketable style or signature trait. So I worked sporadically as a graphic artist, continued developing my style and had showings as time allowed. By 1997 I had a pretty good idea of my artistic future - my work told me what I was going to do! The number of classic impressionist paintings was declining dramatically; more and more of my work was Formal Impressionist. By 1998 I had realized what my work was telling me, and decided to shelve all traditional impressionist work in favor of specifically nurturing this emerging style.

    During this time I was also experimenting with my strong love of the automobile, and my fascination with first-person-perspective online games. I entered Motortrend's International Design Contest in 1999, 2000 and 2001 - winning the inaugural contest and placing well amid fierce competition the following two years. At the same time, I became somewhat obsessed with an online game called Tribes, which is a team-oriented combat game in which players compete in a capture-the-flag environment with jump jets - making the game fully three-dimensional. Using deconstruction techniques, I learned the computer language of Tribes, and, with the help of a friend, wrote and marketed a pair of very successful "mods" (short for "game modification"), complete with additional game environments (maps) and player uniforms (skins). The second of these mods, hvMechWarrior (a synthesis of Tribes and Battletech universes), was so successful that it was hosted on as many as ten separate servers, and my partner and I were flown to Tribes Gala '99 by the HomeLAN company to advertise the mod.

    After working in game and automotive design (both of which I am still passionate about), I am now - for the first time - actively marketing only my paintings. My first official Formal Impressionist show was in early 2002 at McClain's, a coffee house in Fullerton, CA. It was an all-portrait show, and drew such acclaim from patrons that it was extended for an additional month. My next show will be for two months, starting in late April, at Grand Tales, a Gallery in the Santa Ynez wine country town of Los Olivos, CA. This show will feature portraits, landscapes and animal portraits - all in the Formal Impressionist style.

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