About the Artist

Bio

I attended my first art history classes in the months preceding my birth (accompanied by my mother, of course) and her art history text was a constant source of fascination and inspiration as far back as I can remember. The landscape was another inspiration. 

Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I was surrounded by rolling hills and oaks, but also had easy access to the ocean, mountains, and my favorite, the desert. After earning a BFA from SJSU in 1996, I renewed my interest in landscape and plein air painting and continue to hone my oil painting skills to rise to the challenge. I currently divide my time between painting on location and in the studio.

I strive for a painterly realism in which the paint itself has an equal voice with the depiction of the scene. No subject is off limits – trees, sunsets, garbage heaps, parking lots. If beauty is anywhere, then it’s everywhere. It’s just up to us to see it. Everything is in flux, always changing, never the same from one instant to another. Painting affords me the luxury to contemplate the endless arising and passing of all things and how lucky I am to be here at this moment. Hours of focused attention, one brushstroke at a time, immersed in the luminosity of the world. What more could one want? 

Education

1996 BFA Painting and Drawing from San Jose State University

Statement for solo exhibition "Out of the Corner of My Eye"

I assembled this group of paintings under the heading “Out of the Corner of My Eye” because that’s where I find much of my inspiration: Not from the where we usually look but from the places we generally overlook. Peripheral vision comes into focus. The pile of tires behind the bus museum. The alleyway that flashes by the passenger-side window. Half a century of accumulation in a farm outbuilding – layers of stories and intentions that over time approximate randomness.

I like to think that I paint the daily world I live in and I get just as excited by the disposition of tools and empty coffee cans on a garage shelf in the evening light as I would by a majestic mountain. My mantra has always been, “If beauty is anywhere then it’s everywhere.” Beauty isn’t in the eye of the beholder; it’s in the receptive mind and bound up with the act of seeing. Beauty is a challenge and a pleasure, and/or a terror, and a connection to something larger. It frees us from what we thought we knew. At least this is something of the current state of my ruminations, which often occur as I waggle an oily brush at a panel.

As a kid, I wanted to be an archeologist – still do, really – and dig up artifacts that would only invite speculation as to their context and uses while somehow connecting us to other times and a remote, though shared, human experience. I feel like the objects and scenes I’m drawn to are like artifacts, albeit artifacts of the present age, sometimes newly-minted, yet dislodged from their conventional stations.  

I am especially intrigued by things that no longer perform their intended functions. What is a fence that no longer acts like a fence, that doesn’t keep something in or out, or divide a piece of land according to current use, or provide security or privacy? It is still recognizable; it hasn’t dissolved into the earth yet – or not entirely. We still call it a fence but it has become something wholly different and its story has become undetermined. Much more interesting a mystery with an ambiguous conclusion than a puzzle with a definite answer. I feel that objects in this liminal state, in between what they were and what they will be, can be doorways into this mystery, helping our minds open out into uncertainty, vulnerability, and change. Because it is also our mystery. We are all in between, always, in a constant state of flux.

Selected Exhibitions

2022

Out of the Corner of My Eye, Solo Exhibition, The Grand Theatre Center for the Arts, Tracy, CA

2021

Fresh Works X, Firehouse Gallery, Pleasanton, CA

Winter, Fe Gallery, Sacramento, CA, California Art Club 

2020

Our World Reimagined, online showcase, California Art Club

Treasures from the Bay Area, The Holton Studio Gallery, Berkeley, CA, California Art Club

Welcome to California, online showcase, California Art Club

2019

Salon at the Triton, Triton Museum, Santa Clara, CA

Fresh Works IX, Harrington Gallery, Firehouse Arts Center, Pleasanton, CA

Expressions/Selections, The Grand, Tracy, CA

Expressions, Tracy Art League, Tracy, CA

City by the Bay, STUDIO Gallery, San Francisco, CA, California Art Club

Art in the Redwoods, Gualala Arts Center, Gualala, CA

2018

As I see it, San Pablo Art Gallery, three-person show with Eleanor Nelson and David Rose

Art Between the Lines, Burlingame Museum of Art, California Art Club Members Exhibition 

Expressions/Selections, The Grand, Tracy, CA

Expressions, Tracy Art League, Tracy, CA

Fresh Works VIII, Harrington Gallery, Firehouse Arts Center, Pleasanton, CA

Alameda County Fair, Pleasanton, CA

Expressions, Tracy Art League, Tracy, CA

Frank Bette Plein Air Paintout, Frank Bette Center for the Arts, Alameda, CA

2017

Art in the Redwoods, Gualala Arts Center, Gualala, CA

Plein Air Competition, Alameda County Fair, Pleasanton, CA

Fresh Works VII, Harrington Gallery, Firehouse Arts Center, Pleasanton, CA

Alameda County Fair, Pleasanton, CA

2016

Scene on the Strait, Art Festival and Fundraiser, Martinez, CA

Frank Bette Plein Air Paintout, Frank Bette Center for the Arts, Alameda, CA 

Art in the Redwoods, Gualala Arts Center,  Gualala, CA

2015

Greater Bay Are Open, New Museum Los Gatos, Los Gatos, CA

Frank Bette Plein Air Paintout, Frank Bette Center for the Arts, Alameda, CA

Alameda County Fair, Pleasanton, CA

Livermore Art Association Spring Art Show, Livermore, CA

2014

Art in the Redwoods, Gualala, CA

Fremont Art Association Annual Fine Art Show, Fremont, CA

Alameda County Fair, Pleasanton, CA

Fremont Art Association Paint Out, Fremont, CA

2013
Art in the Redwoods, Gualala Arts Center, Gualala, CA

2007
Art in the Redwoods, Gualala Arts Center, Gualala, CA