I began painting as a child. My mother would give me pictures to copy, not trace. She would draw wedding cakes, high heel shoes, couples dancing and never a car or truck. She had been a commercial artist in San Francisco in the thirties and never stopped encouraging me to stay in the arts. My two brothers were so much better at sports that I noticed early on that my gift would be behind a paint brush. I continued my art training through Lincoln High School in Portland and after graduation I went to San Francisco to study for a career in commercial art. After art college I returned to Portland to pursue the art of dentistry. I've been a dentist for nearly thirty years in Gresham, Oregon. I love dentistry and I intend to remain a dentist for at least ten more years, but I hope to keep painting until I can no longer hold a brush.

I originally chose watercolor because I perceived the difficulty of handling the medium as a challenge. I knew that watercolor didn't allow for many mistakes and for the most part you don't use opaque whites. I now do watercolor because I love the translucency and the vitality of the medium.

I paint realism and love the ability to enhance what I see with an emphasis on color and light. I like to think of my work as realism with an attitude. You will see colors that might not really be so vivid in real life, contrasts that will be more pronounced, and people and things added that might tell a better story. I appear in many of my paintings, not as a gimmick, but because many times I feel like I am part of the scene.